‘CALL ME PAPI’ had a successful, well attended premiere night at SM Megamall last Friday night.
The five major cast members were there: Enzo Pineda, Albie Casino, Lharby Policarpio, Royce Cabrera and Aaron Concepcion. Also present was its writer-director Alvin Yapan.
It’s easy to see from their banter, as they were being introduced to the audience before the screening started, that the five young actors really became good friends while shooting the barkada movie. They even took photos of each other.
The story starts with Enzo as Sonny being fired from his job as a gym instructor since he had an affair with a client (Katya Santos), who turned out to be a married woman.
He then goes to stay in the apartment of his friends: Albie as Ben, a waiter; Lharby as Mario and Royce as Lito who both work as call center agents; and Aaron as Roy, a provinciano trying his luck in the big city as a bartender.
The camaraderie among the five guys make them help each as they experience their own personal problems.
The one with the biggest problem is Albie as he got his girlfriend (Anja Aguilar) pregnant and she wants to abort it. But she relents and gives birth to their baby girl, who she later leaves under the care of Ben and his friends who all help in taking care of the infant.
Lharby and Royce both have secrets of their own.
Lharby is really gay while Royce moonlights as a masseur in a spa where he caters to gay clients.
Roy is having financial problems as he’s the family sole breadwinner.
This gets worse when his mom died in the province, but his friends all lend a helping hand to contribute so he can make both ends meet.
For these five young men, life in the big city can be a series of trials and errors, but it helps that they are there to be with each other.
All the five young actors in the show are buff and they display their good physiques in many scenes. Enzo has the most star quality and it’s a pity that his career has not really taken off.
He got tired of waiting at GMA after he won first prince in Starstruck 5 in 2010.
Unlike his colleague Rocco Nacino who stayed and is still being given regular projects now as a Kapuso.
Enzo moved to ABS-CBN and it’s too bad they lost their franchise without being able to give him good starring roles.
Albie has also been on the scene for more than a decade now, but like Enzo, his career as a lead actor has also not taken off.
But at least, he’s never without a project and he gets to do a lot of movies for Vivamax.
What’s nice about Albie is his cheerful personality. At the “Call Me Papi” presscon, he revealed that his girlfriends now are usually foreigners, after his traumatic relationship with Andi Eigenmann.
“I met both my last girlfriend and my current girlfriend in Boracay,” he says.
“They don’t really know me so when they see people recognizing me, they ask ‘Why do they know you?’ And I say kasi I’m a social media influencer. It’s really nice to have a relationship with someone who has no preconceived notions of you, so it’s easier for me to date foreigners.”
Viewers who like films about barkadas will be able to relate with the characters of “Call Me Papi”.
We just notice that although the title of the movie is “Call Me Papi”, not once did we hear the five guys in the film calling each other Papi.
Also, they say the film was shot over a period of more than two years and it shows.
The movie has this disjointed feel and they even did one scene twice, the drinking scene where the characters drink a toast to all guys, specially “yung mga lalaking walang nagmamahal.”
The five young actors surely deserve a more cohesive kind of storytelling. The movie’s ending is also quite abrupt.
As one writer beside me quipped: “Yun na yon?”
