Made soon after his starring role in Gagamboy (FEFJ 2004), Vhong Navarro continues his sly and outrageous comedic sense in this wacky and sometimes bizarre comedy about Filipino male machismo and love based on the character in the hit song Mr Suave by award-winning rock group Parokya ni Edgar. The slick and suave Rico (Navarro) entertains and instructs his loser friends by laying down the four commandments of attracting beautiful women. However they soon discover that when he gets intimate with a woman, his whole body ices up. Trying different methods, they finally alight upon the gorgeous Venus to try and break Rico’s curse by pretending to fall in love with him. But unknown to him, Venus has a secret as damning as his and the course of true love does not run exactly straight…
Joyce Bernal directs the film with a brash sensibility totally in keeping with its larger-than-life protagonist. It is a testament to her skill that she can blend the elements of romance, family drama and surreal comedy into a complete entertainment. There are classic inventive moments of comedy - an encounter with the midget Grandpa and Grandma Suave; the montage of spectacular exploding car stunts to accompany Venus’ love song (showing Bernal’s background in editing action films); and an ending that inverts not only what we have seen, but also what we presume. In the nature of all great comic films, this is a work of subversive fun that overturns stereotypes, defies convention, and manages to tackle a serious subject as well.
It’s to his credit that Navarro has no hesitation of making fun of himself - indeed that seems to be his deep skill as an actor, while Angelica Jones proves herself to be more than just a pretty face, but in any case, what a face!