Ah Boys to Men

Ten years after the release of the 2012 Singaporean comedy "Ah Boys to Men", I happened to stumble upon the movie by random chance. I hadn't even heard about the movie prior to sitting down to watch it here in 2022. And I also came to learn that there are four movies in the franchise.

Director Jack Neo failed to deliver a movie that fully entertained me. Sure, I will say that there were aspects and elements to the storyline that were interesting. But as a whole picture, then "Ah Boys to Men" just failed on many levels. First of all, this is listed as a comedy, but the elements of fun and laughter were few and far in between, and they utterly fell short of managing to bring me to laugh or even smile. The storyline itself just didn't prove to be all that interesting or outstanding, making it a somewhat tedious affair to sit through the movie.

Then there was the fact that most of the movie was spoken in thickly accented English dialogue. That was just beyond my comprehension. Why not keep the movie in Chinese, Tamil or Malaj? That thick accent in the English dialogue was just taking away focus from the events taking place on the screen.

And the character gallery in "Ah Boys to Men" was just downright non-existing. I didn't care one bit about the characters in the storyline, and least of all the main character. Talk about having a character with highly unlikable traits and characteristics. That character was just infuriatingly horrible.

"Ah Boys to Men" fell short of being a properly entertaining movie, and an even worse comedy. So I am not really sure what director Jack Neo was trying to accomplish with this 2012 movie.

My rating of "Ah Boys to Men" lands on a very generous three out of ten stars.