We went to watch this movie quite by accident actually. It was late in the evening and we wanted to watch something but most things were either off timing or heavy or received unexpectedly bad reviews. Or we were just not interested in them. And then we scrolled into this and thought, oh-kay. It was about Harimau Malaya fans and we were Harimau Malaya fans. Not that Harimau Malaya had a whole lot to shout about these days. And we have not really heard, well, anything about this movie in the first place. The publicity (I will get back to this in a bit) was so low key, it was next to nothing. When we got to the cinema, the cardboard poster of this movie was literally next to the restroom corridors. And there was no digital poster presence either. Not that we saw any, anyway.
There were approximately ten people in the audience. Including us. You can imagine our expectation of the movie at this point.
The movie begins and it was immediately A.M.A.Z.I.N.G!
I kid you not. It is up there among some of the best movies I have seen this year. Fine, it has been a year of pretty lousy movies, but that makes a gem like this one even more surprising!
Rembat is a laugh-out-loud comedy that any Malaysian can relate to, with the right amount of racist jokes to boot! There was a lot of thought behind the writing and directing and it was packed with Malaysian flavour. Sure, it could use a hairline more snappiness, but that is just me being petty. I cannot get over how great everything was packaged into the movie. Great story. Great directing. Great casting (no star studs here, but everyone falls so perfectly into their roles).
No spoilers here. I just really want all of you to go and watch this. On the drive home, we were talking about how we had to accidentally stumble into a movie like this just because we didn't feel like watching anything else. This brings me back to the point of publicity. We could have easily missed on this amazing movie. And God knows how many of such great movies like this that we have missed already just because we did not know they were showing! In writing this post, I scoured the net looking for other reviews or even a site that promoted this movie. Na da. Just a Facebook page and one 15-second YouTube trailer. Even the poster wasn't easy to find (the Coming Soon poster is more popular than the actual poster!).
I am obligated to write this post because I think every Malaysian should watch this movie. Yes, it is slapstick and no, you'd probably have never heard of the actors. But you should still all go round up all your friends and watch this together. It is fun. Lots of fun.
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