THE PREDICTIONS that this year’s Metro Manila Filmfest will be a flop came true. We heard that the combined entry of the four current top earners among the entries, “Die Beautiful”, “Ang Babae sa Septic Tank 2”, “Seklusyon” and “Vince Kath James”, amount only to less than P60 million. Last year, that was just the opening day take of “My Bebe Love”.
We saw five movies in one day and in three of them, there were only a handful of us viewers inside the cavernous theaters of SM North Edsa. There were no long lines and no crowds. Even the two other movies we watched that have capacity crowds are not really full as there were still many vacant seats. We won't be surprised if it will now be the theatre owners to complain as they are truly losing money from the holiday crowd of moviegoers who, let's face it, watch movies mainly to escape from reality and be entertained and not to be taught good values or learn something about social relevance.
To top it all, two movies we saw made us wonder how they made it to the final 8 entries. One of them didn’t even get any rating from the Cinema Evaluation Board, where as “Mano Po 7: Chinoy” was disqualified, but got a B rating from the CEB.
