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| Johnny Delgado in Will Your Heart Beat Faster? |
Cast: Christopher De Leon, Charo Santos, Jay Ilagan, Sandy Andolong, Boboy Garrovillo, Johnny Delgado, Armida Siguion-Reyna, Leo Martinez, Moody Diaz, Joe Jardi, Danny Javier. Screenplay: Cloduado Del Mundo Jr., Raquel Villavicencio, Mike De Leon. Cinematography: Rody Lacap. Production design: Raquel Villavicencio. Film editing: Ike Jariego Jr. Music: Lorrie Ilustre.
Comedy often doesn't translate well, and for most of us non-Filipino viewers, a great deal of Mike De Leon's romantic, satiric musical comedy Will Your Heart Beat Faster? gets lost in translation. There's a lot of business involving the attempt of a particularly inept member of the Japanese yakuza to smuggle drugs into the Philippines, involving a quartet of attractive young people who become his unwitting vehicle when he slips a cassette tape into the pocket of the hero, a pop star named Johnny (Christopher De Leon). Lots of mistaken identities and slapstick action ensue, especially when the Chinese decide to muscle in on the territory. But when everything comes together toward the end, the movie blossoms into a goofy, entertaining extravaganza involving nuns, priests, smugglers, cops, mysterious passageways, and who knows what else. It's definitely not politically correct -- I'm assuming that the "Japs" and "Chinks" of the subtitles are translations of equivalent slurs in the original Filipino language. Under the original title, Kakabakaba Ka Ba?, it was a big hit in its homeland, which has been no stranger to exploitation by its more powerful neighbors.
