So Awful, It’s Hilarious. “tum: My Pledge of Love” Film Review
There are bad movies, and there are really awful movies. And then there is “Tum: My Pledge of Love” which is so awful, to the point that it is hilarious. Don’t get me wrong; I did not walk into this movie with an antagonizing mindset; I actually consider Robin Padilla as one of my local film industry idols, I don’t read up on gossip news enough to say that the Robin-Mariel love team has annoyed me, and Mariel Rodriguez is one of my local celebrity crushes. “Tum: My Pledge of Love” is its own monster, pure high grade garbage; to the point that its pureness can become appealing to those with twisted perverse tastes in film quality, those who find a degree of amusing appreciation for the stinkiest of B-movies.
This movie is directed by Robin Padilla (credited in the film as “directed by Robin Hood” because Robin’s full name is actually Robin Hood Padilla), and after the first fifteen minutes of the movie, you can safely conclude that Robin should just stick to acting. But when you watch this movie, Robin’s acting is still awful. Robin plays a very cartoony version of himself; it’s like he’s re-doing all of the awful performances he’s ever had in his past movies. It almost feels like a parody of himself; the only problem is that it’s not funny. There are several scenes of Robin walking around in a posture that looks like he is about to draw an imaginary pistol from an imaginary holster. I feel sorry for the guy, coz he just looks immensely pathetic. Same thing with Mariel, she’s also acting in a very exaggerated manner that it comes off as pathetically un-funny.
The only good parts of the movie are those moments when they are not trying too hard to be funny or loud. It is in simple quiet moments when their acting is pretty much decent. But then again, those moments in the film last for a mere couple of seconds.
The film employs sloppy editing. There is a manner of intercutting that looks so weirdly silly. Flashbacks that looked like they were forced into some scenes quite improperly. Likewise, there is also the use of awkward film angles. If you add that with the bad editing, the result is something that looks like it’s as if it had a 12-year-old editor who wanted to look like it was done in an auteur sort of way; but it comes off as just messy and altogether ugly.
Sloppy editing is not enough to make this movie the great mess that it is. The story and its ideas are all messy to begin with. There are just lots of (sh!t) stuff that don’t make sense, that often derail the movie from whatever story it wants to tell. At one hand, the movie wants to have a serious reflection on Hindu-Muslim tolerance, while on the other hand, they also want to tell a romantic comedy, then they inject an awkward love triangle between the minor characters, and they also want to tell an action movie. If this was indeed Robin Padilla’s attempt to make his own Bollywood movie, he makes the mistake of giving us a first impression of his directorial style, which comes off as just very very awful.
In one scene, Robin is having a serious discussion (about the issue of running the school with Muslim and Hindu students studying side-by-side) with the Imam and school officials inside an office, then they get distracted by some noise. Outside the window, they see Mariel playing cricket with the students. So, Robin and the officials went out of the room to watch her. In this “slo-mo” dramatic moment, Mariel bats the ball and delivers what seems like a homerun (or whatever term they use in cricket for that). Then, after doing so, Mariel and the students get distracted by the noise of a firetruck. The truck passed by just beside the cricket area. Our attention now gets thrown back to Robin who is suddenly now astride in a heavily-decorated horse, who then approaches Mariel and then they ride off to a musical number. The sequence went from a supposedly serious atmosphere, and then proceeds to a sequence that completely makes no sense.
I was cringing several moments of the film because it was trying to discuss sensitive issues about Muslim culture, Hindu Culture, and the clash of those two cultures, yet the movie as a whole is such a joke. It was as if the producer(s) of this movie was going out of its way to summon a Muslim leader and a Hindu leader and attempt to preach before them, while wearing nothing except clown make-up. Despite all the efforts, despite all the production values, this film is an epic fail.
And before I forget, I do not even know what “Tum” means? Does “Tum” and “My Pledge of Love” have the same meaning? The movie does not bother to answer that.
The horrible acting from its cast, the really poor dialogue, the bad lip-synch in musical numbers, the story that makes no sense, and the directing that feels so recklessly immature. There were moments in the movie that were either so bad, or it went to bizarre directions, that I ended up laughing. If I were to point out the one tiny good thing about this movie, is that it’s so bad, that it’s hilarious. I have now found the second worst Pinoy movie ever made (second only to “Alamat ng Lawin”).
Written by Reymundo Salao
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