‘Gameboys: The Movie’ Review: An Online Relationship Gets Real

In “Gameboys: The Film,” the implications and uncertainties of the pandemic are the star of the present.

Earlier than this feature-length spinoff, the Filipino net sequence “Gameboys” (later proven on Netflix) used the boys’ love style — made well-liked in manga — to confront how the pandemic was taking a toll on relationships. The present launched audiences to the livestream gamer Cairo (Elijah Canlas) and considered one of his followers, Gavreel (Kokoy De Santos), with the 2 discovering each other throughout Luzon’s lockdown and, amid intense isolation, interfacing on-line. With the movie, their relationship strikes from the digital to the in-person realm.

And when the 2 transfer in with one another, they, like with many pandemic pairings, are pressured to take care of a few of the extra unsavory components of being collectively (an excessive amount of consideration, when to bathe and the like). Their evolving dynamic is difficult when the quarreling quasi-lovers Terrence (Kyle Velino) and Wesley (Miggy Jimenez), and Gavreel’s conservative Aunt Susan (Angie Castrenc), crash their pandemic residence.

“Gameboys: The Film,” directed by Ivan Andrew Payawal and written by Ash M. Malanum, doesn’t take the comedian scenario and run with it. As an alternative, it leads with a teen cleaning soap tone, and regardless of billing itself as a movie, feels structurally extra like a string of episodes smashed collectively. It toggles between a desktop film (just like the horror movie “Unfriended”), with characters on FaceTime or livestreaming, and a simple one. However it’s at its finest when it lets harsh actuality — significantly the sacrifices individuals who love one another need to make — disrupt its extra predictable and adolescent impulses.

Gameboys: The Film
Not rated. In Tagalog and Filipino, with subtitles. Operating time: 1 hour 47 minutes. Hire or purchase on Apple TV, Google Play and different streaming platforms and pay TV operators.