Another rainy day in Baguio. That didn't stop me from enjoying the day, all I needed... my trusty umbrella and a gang of rambunctious friends.

4 pm. I met Tine and Ely to buy die-cast Volkswagens for our friend CA who was gonna celebrate her two-week delayed birthday celebration later on in the night. That's one of the things about growing up and having jobs, we rarely celebrate birthdays and even rarely do we celebrate them on time. The beetle matchboxes were requested gifts and CA was registered at her favorite novelty matchbox shop.

We had 5 hours to kill. I stayed up late because of Wikimapia, so I still felt a little groggy and disoriented. I needed a caffeine fix. So we checked out Paliz Zata, a new cafe our friend Joyce raved about. It was at the roof top of Porta Vaga, a mini-mall (I'm using mini here... Philippine malls keep getting bigger and bigger)

We decided to take the long route. Tine, Ely and I sharing one umbrella. Tine and I actually had umbrellas of our own, but we were just too lazy to bring them out of the warmth of our bags. We passed by The Baguio Cathedral and I had to take a picture.


The cathedral looked so ethereal with all the mist. The usual pastel pink walls were diluted by the fog. The church looked so majestically neo-European. We reached the cafe, the lower part of our jeans soaking wet. It was a nice cafe overlooking Baguio and had a revolving-restaurant-ish ambience. We chatted about personal stuff and pondered the structural integrity of the cafe which was 75% enclosed with glass. Wind pressure, glass thickness, beam-window connections... stuff I won't bore you with. I'm pressing the fast forward button...

7 pm. We met Joyce at the Filipino shopping hub known as SM. Malls... I have mixed feelings about them. We decided to spend the last two hours in a cinema rather than strain our calves window-shopping. A feel-good movie was in order, we needed to tune ourselves for the party. I wanted to watch Click but Ely already saw it, second choice was...

My Super Ex-Girlfriend

This movie raises the question:

If you had super powers, what would you want them to be? AND... would you use them on worthless scum like your exes?

Achtung! I blabber too much, I might say some things that would spoil the movie for youif you're planning to watch it.

Uma Thurman plays Jenny Johnson aka superhero G-Girl. Matt Saunders (Luke Wilson) hits on her in a subway. A thief snatches Jenny's bag... Matt plays knight in shining business suit. G-Girl who does most of the saving, get's saved (in a way) for once. Jenny gets infatuated. Matt fulfills a fantasy after Jenny discloses her identity. Jenny thinks she fell in love. Matt discovers he's in love with someone else. Matt breaks up with Jenny... awful idea. Jenny becomes psychotic, vengeful ex-G-Girlfriend.


What I Liked:

1. Uma as G-Girl is like Beatrix Kiddo on Prozac. She had the best looking superhero costumes, chic but save-the-world-functional.
2. Uma as Jenny... Her portrayal of neurotic Jenny Johnson was reminiscent of dear dear Noelle (The Truth About Cats and Dogs) The usual Uma roles are defined by wit, confidence and excellent articulation, and on these rare occasions where she plays depressed and desperate characters, she becomes all the more lovable.
3. Luke Wilson plays an architect.
   
4. Rooting for Matt and finding G-Girl a psycho one minute, and then completely changing your mind: Finding Matt pathetic and wanting G-Girl to shove that chainsaw up his ass.
   
5. Matt's bestfriend played by Rainn Wilson (Six Feet Under)
6. Anna Faris made the friends that should be lovers thing with Luke Wilson's character work quite well, she is so much better when she under-acts. During the last 15 minutes of the movie, she fell back to her pigeon hole... as Cindy from the Scary Movies.
7. The best thing about this movie for me is the humanization of superheroes (which is what made the last Batman movie, the X-men movies and the Spiderman movies really good) Years of keeping a secret identity can make you paranoid, untrusting and neurotic. Superheroes can also have their hearts broken, they can be petty, they can be desperate and they can use their powers for personal reasons.
   

What I didn't:

1. Luke Wilson playing a normal, tax-paying and clumsy character usually works for me. This time it didn't.
2. The in-your-face humor of Wanda Sykes was underused.
3. The transformation of flashback Jenny into G-Girl should've been okey but they decided to add an increase in her bra cup size as a part of her transformation. Women who have bigger boobs have "super" powers in a way... but having that idea plastered on a movie screen is just tacky.
4. A more charismatic and memorable actor should've played Bedlam... someone along the likes of Jack Black or Matt Stone.
   
5. The last 15 minutes of the movie were predictable and uninspired. Everyone ends up happy of course.
   

My new movie rating system: Haha Value (Entertainment Value), Hmmm Value (Intellectual Value) and Sniff Value (Emotional Value)


All in all, My Super Ex-Girlfriend is an excellent feel-good movie. Watch it if you like movies like Shallow Hal, There's Something About Mary and Mystery Men. It may not be a life changing movie, It only engages your brain a little, but it has definite Entertainment Value.

It served its purpose for us. I left the cinema in party mode. We arrived at Red Lion, 10 minutes late and found out we were the first ones there. Drasted Filipino time. We waited at the bar... and actually had a fun time watching the bar tenders mix drinks and falter every now and then.

One hour and 30 minutes late, our extremely tardy celebrant arrives. We already had a couple of Millers each on her tab. Ok lang... Birthday mo naman eh. Beer, Pulutan, Marlboro Lights, Die-cast Volkswagens and great drinking buddies. It was an awesome night/morning.

Happy Two-Week Belated Birthday CA!

Labels: B-days, baguio, cafe, movies, nyt-out