Manila in Living Color: A Review of Saving Sally

If you ask me to describe Saving Sally, I’d say try to imagine living in your daydreams. It is filled with fun animation, witty symbolisms, and lush colors. In that world, being the nice guy doesn't seem so bad.

Marty, the mighty nerdy protagonist is in love with his best friend, Sally, but he's not sure if she's interested in him too. Being one of those “torpe” types, he misses every chance he gets to tell her how he feels. Sounds familiar, right? Sally is not the shallow girl-next-door, but more of the fun, smart, nice girl-trapped-in-a-big-house type. Sally may have saved Marty in the beginning, but the rest of the plot is all about saving her from evil parents and a giant dick.

Saving Sally Trailer

The premise isn’t nothing new - a friend-zoned dude is in love with his best friend. It's an overused formula, I know, and without its talented supporting cast armed with the perfect comedic timing, this typical love story would have suffered. There were several scenes that became too dragging that I ended up becoming anxious to move on to the next one. The two leads have chemistry, I dare say even better than Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen's, but there were a few dialogues that were too flat, and I wanted to tell Marty, “Get over her!”. The plot may be basic, but it has an edge to its concept.

We see the world through Marty's eyes. He's an aspiring comic book artist, so we see monsters just like how he sees monsters. He sees douchey boyfriends as giant dicks (Be careful! They can accidentally get you pregnant when they run you over). His landscapes are more colorful than what could be taken by our camera phones. Whatever he feels, his shirt says it all. And, each character has its own color-coded outfit. What the film failed in the screenplay, they made up for in production. It's as colorful as a jeepney or a serving of Halo-halo. Signs in the background represent the Filipino humor, which provide some laughs, and gives it another advantage, like a sneak peek into our society.

This is a movie banking on irony. The poster says it all. It's a typical love story shown in an extraordinary way. I wished the plot would've been darker, but maybe painting the world grey is not what's needed now. It shows our colorful culture with restraint – modern, creative, classy, and progressive. The team behind Saving Sally saves an industry we never knew existed here in the first place.

Rating: 4 / 5

Credits to the images and videos used in this post go to "Saving Sally", MMFF, and/or to their respective owners. We do not own these materials. No copyright infringement intended.