‘Hayop Ka! The Nimfa Dimaano Story’ review: Mostly bark, barely any bite

Avid Liongoren’s Hayop Ka! The Nimfa Dimaano Story is quite a thing of beauty, with each of its lovingly-rendered frames worthy of being the centerpiece of a postcard.

The animated film is something that is pleasant to lay ones’ eyes on. It is colorful and vibrant. Its visual wit is often on point, with the film’s most effective jokes part and parcel of the lush and luscious visual screen.

Sadly, there isn’t just much beneath its enthusiastic veneer. The fun mostly ends when it becomes apparent that by taking away its cleverly realized animation, the film is largely lacking in real concept and imagination.

Golden age of titillation

Hayop Ka! harkens to the golden age of titillation, when fruits and foodstuffs take on sexier meanings and regurgitated soap opera storylines of forbidden romances crossing social divides are mixed up with copious amounts of gratuitous nudity and sex.

There is crystal clear merit in resurrecting the genre, twisting its more forbidden pleasures through the flexibility afforded by animation, turning its horny characters into actual animals enraptured by their animalistic desires. It is wildly ingenious, if not deliciously subversive when done right.

Sadly, Liongoren’s efforts are all for an irresistible sprinkling of eye candy to an otherwise bland concoction.

Hayop Ka! follows the amorous escapades of Nimfa Dimaano (Angelica Panganiban), literally an alley cat working as a saleslady in a department store. She’s currently in a relationship with Roger (Robin Padilla), a muscle-bound mongrel who makes up for his lack of economic ambition with his lewd talents in the bedroom. Nimfa, however, gets involved with hunky and wealthy husky Inigo (Sam Milby), who shows her the possibilities of what life could be outside her daily meager existence.

The film proceeds towards the familiar grooves of the genre, piling jokes upon jokes, undermining whatever goal it has for resurrecting tropes from cinema reserved for closeted macho horndogs, whether it is just blunt nostalgia or subversion, with the most juvenile humor. 

Sounds like fun

Sounds like a lot fun, so what exactly is the problem?

The problem is that all the overflowing creativity just feels wasted. 

See, animation serving adult concerns isn’t exactly new. BoJack Horseman explores similar territories, with its many animal characters struggling through their uniquely human dilemmas. Heck, even Liongoren’s own Saving Sally (2016) softened the bleakness of the abuses human beings are capable of with its horde of animated monsters preventing the love story of a damsel in distress and her hopelessly romantic knight in shining streetwear. 

Hayop Ka! is a prettified spoof. 

It starves for advocacy, for a reason for its existence other than as sheer entertainment. Aside from its lovely aesthetics, it fails to offer progress to the genre it chooses to poke fun at, maintaining the underpinnings of the potboilers of the 90’s with the inadequacies of its thinly conceptualized story of Nimfa, who never really rises above the grossly patriarchal world she finds herself existing in. 

Sure, the film ends seemingly with a statement towards women fighting back and living independently without the men that abuse them. However, given the rest of the film where their carnal frivolities are displayed for chuckles, its ending feels like an afterthought. It is but a last-ditch effort for relevance.

Skin-deep novelty

Hayop Ka! is mostly bark, and barely any bites.

It’s sure to give those who want their entertainment laced with skin-deep novelty a jolly good time. However, there’s hardly anything underneath its bawdiness and boisterous gags. – Rappler.com