Sosyal Climbers Review – Maris Racal, Anthony Jennings
Here’s my Sosyal Climbers review which stars Maris Racal and Anthony Jennings and directed by Jason Paul Laxamana and now streaming on Netflix.
The onscreen pair plays Jessa and Ray, two aspiring middle class young adults who struggle to earn a living and gets hooked into living a fake rich life to scam their rich neighbors. After getting scammed, the two venture into fixing a multi-million property called 12 Cassiopeia but then realize that they can squeeze the one percenters money that they can use to pay off the debts they incurred from a pyramid scam they got roped in.
Jennings and Racal just oozes with chemistry. The smolder in their looks in romantic moments, those little seductive looks that the two share whenever we hit those moments arrive. Jennings also has this child like wonderment in his eyes and face when we get to those kilig posts. And even in the film’s final moments, they did give us a funny moment so that’s nice.
Racal as Jessa was nice to watch in this film. She’s fun and smart and quirky. While Jennings also had the time to shine as an actor with a more tougher role. Its a nice mirroring of their roles from that teleserye “Can’t Buy Me Love” where they really did hit it off and became big success.
One major flaw for me was that fabricated lover’s quarrel where Jessa realizes that she suddenly wants to break up with Ray for not giving her what she wants. She does this speech about being poor and not wanting to stick around because her lover doesn’t have a 5 year plan, which she clearly stated she doesn’t care about early in the film.
Ricky Davao here also flexes his acting skills as Mr. Pecson, the village homeowner president. The intimidation, the intensity was so good. Classic villain stuff. Carmi Martin was also phenomenal what with her short role although I did love that its a carbon copy of her role in Four Sisters and a Wedding although a bit more polished and refined.
I found the first few minutes significantly weaker but I knew I had to take a bit more before it started to get interesting and yes, it does but after that it took a little bit more to be really involved with the characters.
That ending wasn’t that much to go by although it had to have some of the best local cinematography and visuals. I know I’ve seen that scene where somebody sits down in front of a painting before but I guess that one had a different purpose as opposed to what “Sosyal Climbers” wanted to do for that particular moment.
I love VST and Company but could we please NOT use “Ikaw Lang Ang Aking Mahal” in every romcoms? Having this beautiful song popping in always kind of diminishes the power of this ballad. Yun lang.
