Totoy Golem (1995) Poster

(1995)

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1/10
Beyond idiotic
Nen_Master35710 February 2023
This is one of those films that make you want to vomit because of how nauseating and bad it is. It's one of those movies capitalizing on the old gangsters of post World War II Tondo.

The film stars Rommel Padilla as the titular character and to be honest, I really don't see what's so special about his acting or performance in this film. The guy is mostly flat and wooden in a lot of his scenes, a far cry from his more popular sibling who usually commands the attention of viewers from the get go. The dragon tattoo on his arm and shoulder is also somewhat distracting as it makes him look like a yakuza thug, not a fifties era Tondo gangster.

Anyways, the action scenes are mostly unremarkable, most of it consisting of fist fights you've seen a hundred times and were better executed in other movies, specifically in the no budget films of Ace Vergel and Rudy Fernandez from the seventies. Here, they're just bland and generic, not very imaginative or original. Though the fight between Totoy and Asiong was somehow creative because they get to brawl in the mud but the rest of the fights just weren't that interesting. The sex scenes on the other hand are lousy, unrealistic and tedious. It's obvious, Padilla and his leading ladies were uncomfortable doing them.

The main problem with the film is the horrific pacing and unnecessary sequences that drag on. The syrupy sweet and sickly domestic scenes go on and on like a telenovela. Totoy talks to his father and mother, then he talks to his wife, aww, how sweet. Get the f-ck out of here. Ok, we get it, Totoy is a mama's boy and a simp, now show us the actual goods for pete's sake. When the film isn't trying to be a cute soap opera, it tries to be a sitcom. There's lots of comedy antics. Except none of these skits are even remotely funny, they just reek of t.h. (trying hard) and are annoying. One of the gags involve a dog cooked as a dish for a drinking session (aka "pulutan" in the Filipino vernacular) in which the head of the dog was actually served on a plate. Not asuzena or kilawin but the actual head of the dog (Talk about Super Saiyan levels of stupidity). Then there's the serenade scene where Totoy's butt ugly buddies (they look like rapists, to be honest) try to be all goofy for cheap laughs. Someone should have reminded the script writer that Dolphy and Vic Sotto did a better job with this gag back in the eighties and early nineties. Clearly, the director forgot he was supposed to make a gangster action film, not a comedy movie.

This movie was made basically for the mentally impaired. You'd literally lose brain cells watching this garbage.
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