Partners in Crime is Vice Ganda's comeback movie, this time pairing herself with Ivana Alawi.
This movie a fruit salad of different flavors and a lot of milk. What I mean to say is that this movie triggers emotions in very witty ways. Emotional scenes remain emotional even when it makes you laugh. Uplifting scenes remain uplifting even when it makes you laugh. There's actually a lesson to be learned and it doesn't have too much subplots, which makes it easy to understand. What's more is that it tries to break the typical Filipino Cliches you find in many comedy movies. This movie's plot is very refreshing for a Filipino Movie.
The premise of the movie is about Jack and Nicole's friendship, how they met, how they turned on each other, and how fate reunites them for another try in fixing friendships and ruining careers. All of these plot points are in the trailer so I don't really consider it as spoilers. How the plot played out is what I want to discuss, and boy was it refreshing to see a new concept play out that diverts from other comedy films.
The jokes are new, suspiciously more suggestive, and is honestly even dark at times but they're not the kind of dark ones that might have the tendency to offend anyone. However, there are in fact jokes that do miss; heck there's a lot of them. But when they hit, I assure you that you will get the best laughs out of it. Even if some of the jokes were spoiled to viewers when watching the trailer, it doesn't take away from the laughs at all. In a nutshell, the jokes are what you call an "all or nothing" scenario. It's either you burst our laughing, or you stay silent and ask yourself if there was a joke there in the first place.
The visual effects doesn't look good at all. Honestly it's actually terrible, but that's just used for certain scenes and it doesn't play a big role in the movie. Almost all of the movie is composed of real backgrounds, props, and materials unlike Fantastica.
Even so, I was never entertained this much by a Vice Ganda Movie. I did have a couple laughs in his previous movies, but I had a lot of laughs with this one. Maybe it's just the thrill to see the audience laugh? Probably not. The last time I watched a Vice Movie in the cinema, the audience was barely laughing.
That says a lot to this movie. It's good. You should add this to the list of must-watch movies if you're a Filipino. Sadly, you do have to be a Filipino to understand a lot of jokes, and the sub doesn't really do a good job of translating the jokes.
