MMFF REVIEW: Sosy Problems

Title: Sosy Problems

Director: Andoy Ranay

Producer: GMA Films

Distribution: GMA Films

Date of premiere: December 25, 2012

Sosy Problems is almost impossible to sit through. It has a horrible story, an unlikable set of characters, and comes off insulting to viewers of all classes.

The intro says this much. Here, a monologue defines the different people in the country's social strata by using narrow and insensitive descriptors: the poor can't buy food, the working class struggles to eat at minimum wage, the middle class can eat three meals but can't buy a snack. Oh, and they all cannot buy cars--the upper middle class can buy cars but only second-hand.

If that monologue is not gratingly insulting, your skin must be too thick. Or you may be too apathetic.

Of course, the people behind Sosy Problems can put up the it-is-only-satire defense as an excuse to all this tripe. But what is it satirizing, exactly? The upper echelons of society, you say, those creatures who do nothing but shop for expensive luxuries and brag about those stuff.

But this movie does nothing of that.

Sosy Problems tells the story of four friends: Lizzie Consunji (Rhian Ramos) is an heir of a hotel franchise, Claudia Ortega (Heart Evangelista) is the daughter of a beauty queen, Margaux Bertrand (Solenn Heussaff) is the daughter of another beauty queen, and Danielle Alvarez (Bianca King), who is the daughter of a politician who has been charged with graft and corruption.

The narrative is all over the place. Lizzie is a disrespectful brat, so her father sends her to the province so she can wise up. Claudia and Margaux are best friends, but they are fighting for the affection of one valet boy. Danielle is aware of her disappearing riches, so she plots to attract a rich boy whom she could marry. 

There's also an overarching plot of the four girls trying to save a polo club from demolition. Of all the narrative threads, this one is the worst.

First off, the four girls initially try to save the polo club because it is the only place where they can hang out exclusively. Second, they show that they don't want the demolition to happen because they despise the new owner, a former yaya or caretaker who married a rich man.

The yaya (brilliantly played by Mylene Dizon) wants to demolish the polo club so she can create a mall for yayas like her, and the elite four is having none of it.

If that doesn't look like blatant classism to you, then you might want to have your heart checked.

The other narrative threads are just as icky, most of all Danielle's. The girl thinks the only way out of her predicament is to marry a rich guy. In the end, she snags one, who pledges to help her corrupt father to get out of jail.

Advocating using riches to get corrupt politicians out of culpability... does this still look like satire to you?

The main problem with this movie, then, is that the characters are just plain unlikable. They do get infused with a worthy cause at the end--that is, to save the polo club for its employees who are losing their jobs--but at that point it already feels artificial.

Watching Sosy Problems makes me remember the infamous line by social party animal Tim Yap, who is also in the movie. In 1997, he gave us this gem: 

"There is this mind-set, which I think is so passe, that says: `The country is in shambles and the country is having a hard time and you are out there partying.' But this generation is guiltless when it comes to that."

This quote best describes Sosy Problems. It encourages an uncaring attitude to the country's ills.

Sosy Problems could have been better if it gave a touch of realism. These are the apathetic sosyal, the people we gossiped about in Chikatime, so where are the juicy scandals and the drug use?

Perhaps GMA Films should have decided to distribute Gino Santos's The Animals instead of producing this crap.

RATING: 0.5 star out of 5
SUMMARY: Unrealistic and awful, insulting, and too apathetic. No wonder it lags at the box office.