‘Harry & Patty’ review: Cute but bewildering

Julius’ Alfonso’s Harry & Patty relies greatly on the charm of Cacai Bautista, a quietly gifted comedienne who is unfortunately casted in very specific roles that center on looks rather than talent.

The films is oftentimes vibrant because Bautista takes the brunt of the humor, making the self-deprecation a tad more enduring. It also helps that Ahron Villena exudes a charismatic demeanor that adds a layer of verity to the unlikely love story. The film owes its meager pleasures to its protagonists’ chemistry.

Trickles forward

Harry & Patty opens with ride-share driver Patty (Cacai Bautista) in a droll sequence of her experiences with various passengers with very strange emergencies. One needs to give birth. Another needs to go to the bathroom. Another one needs to move on from a lover’s philandering. The last one, however, involves drunk and barely functioning Harry (Ahron Villena), who she has to bring up to his condo unit and provide extra care for.

From there, the love story very slowly trickles forward.

Alfonso mines the conceit of Patty and Harry being mismatched lovers because of the stark difference in their looks for laughs and giggles. Unfortunately, there are a few jokes that border being mean-spirited, with a lot of the characters wisecracking about Harry’s decision to court Patty. It seems that the film is unable to avoid grounding its comedy on the obvious, which is a stark sign of a deficiency in ambition.

Fluff and fantasies

The film will inevitably reveal the point beneath its abundant fluff, which is that there is more to people than their looks.

There is a twist at work, which is hoped to seal the deal, but only reinforces the idea that the love story of Patty and Harry is more a product of fantasy than a very real possibility. The film is very much confused about its endeavors. It imagines itself to be endearing with its narrative acrobatics but only ends up muddling the issue. It was simply better when the love was not reinforced by hidden personalities and agendas. It was more affecting when the attraction was really based on just love and not some forgotten history.

Harry & Patty, already busy as it is with its protagonists’ struggle to prove to everybody that they are indeed a match, riddles itself with other concerns.

The film has too many characters. Some are even granted uninteresting sideplots that only distract. It is almost as if Alfonso and his team aren’t very confident with the worth of the central romance that they insist on crowding it with a lackluster one involving Patty’s brother (Mark Neumann) and his classmate (Heaven Paralejo). The sideplot involving Harry’s parents is also conveniently resolved, making it seem like a mere afterthought than an actual narrative milestone.

Easiest of delights

Harry & Patty is a cute but sometimes bewildering little romance. That’s it.

Sadly, that is all it’s ever going to be with the very meager directions its plot takes to reach its predictable course.

It has promise but it mostly squanders it for the easiest of delights. – Rappler.com

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ Tirad Pass.

Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema.