The Fabulous Filipino Brothers: Real Brothers Playing Brothers Amounts to Four Separate Sometimes-Crude Sitcoms
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B-minus
Culturally specific indie comedies like The Fabulous Filipino Brothers are not exactly new (think 2002’s L.A. Latina-themed Real Women Have Curves). But the slipstream of a hit like Crazy Rich Asians does help smaller-scale movies break out.
Like CRA, the cruder, cheaper and mostly entertaining The Fabulous Filipino Brothers – in U.S. theatres and on VOD in Canada - involves hijinks around a wedding and a not-so-veiled theme of Western assimilation.
Danny, Dave, Dayo and Duke (Darion, Dionysio, Derek and Dante Basco) in The Fabulous Filipino Brothers.
Its heart, however, is right there in the credits. The four not-quite-mature adult Filipino-American brothers (and one sister) who congregate noisily around their mother’s kitchen table in Pittsburg, California, are actual brothers and sister. Director/co-writer Dante Basco plays Duke, the one “rich Asian” in the family, who’s scored a high-paying job and a beautiful wife, but feels unfulfilled.
Dionysio Basco plays Dave, the “funny one” who jokes through his aimless life. Darion Basco is Danny, “the dark one,” recovering from a romantic trauma by holing up in his room and adding visuals to electronic music all day. Arianna Basco is the good-humoured, long-suffering sister Dores, whose narration basically amounts to Explaining Filipinos 101.
And Derek Basco plays the eldest, Dayo, who considers all family business to be his responsibility, though his solution to everything seems to involve something “ghetto.”
Dayo, who’s married to a Chinese-American (Cheryl Tsai) would bristle at my Crazy Rich Asians comparison, exclaiming to her, as he does, that Filipinos are “not like other Asians, we’re Jungle Asians!”
That pride in the Philippines is at odds with the fact that none of the brothers speaks Tagalog (which bothers the elders in the family). Or as one of Dayo’s shady buddies puts it, “I don’t speak Manny Pacquiao!”
Dante’s commitment to giving all four brothers their story basically turns The Fabulous Filipino Brothers into an anthology, verging on four separate sitcoms. But the narratives don’t all merit the screentime. Despite being the “funny one,” Dave’s story mostly involves an extended, cheap, silent seduction scene with a wedding guest, involving food (Hey, people have to eat that!).
Dayo’s is the more antic, and funnier tale, in which he tries to raise cash for the wedding feast he’d promised to pay for. His solution involves delivering a champion rooster to a cock fight. (Not to worry. No cocks are actually seen fighting in this movie, though the use of MF-bombs in the dialogue reaches the saturation point here).
The dialogue is clunky at times, and the forced four-narrative format means no character is really fleshed out.
But the movie finds its heart and its footing in the last act with Danny’s story and a redemptive finale. This is a “male gaze” movie, being that it’s about four young men and a patriarchal culture, hence the lewd (and in one case dark) sexcapades that inform the story. But the women get the first and last word.
The Fabulous Filipino Brothers. Directed by Dante Brasco, written by Dante Brasco, Arianna Brasco and Darion Brasco. Available on VOD in Canada on Tuesday, February 8. Stars Darion Basco, Dionysio Basco, Derek Basco and Dante Basco