Goodbye Boys

My Hari Raya holidays are being spent sitting bent (un)comfortably on my bed, PS2 controller on hand, mashing away to the game Final Fantasy XII. After a spot of waking up on the wrong side of the bed on Monday, which resulted in a not so good mood (which I feel no need to elaborate, had wanted to do that originally but I changed my mind), which further resulted in significant losses in mahjong-ing on Monday night, yet another movie comes in hand to set things right.

Originally wanted to go to the mamak, Jon invited us to his place to watch Goodbye Boys he bought (original copy) from Giant USJ. It came as a surprise as I didn’t think he was the type to watch local movies, much less buy one; once phone calls have been made and traded (DiGi’s service was completely down for me, so for the first time ever in months I was using my house phone to ring people up), we went in two cars to Jon’s place, reaching there at midnight.

I loved the cinematography, the way the camera pans about that makes the movie less boring. Apart from the bunch of Rexona advertisements incorporated at the beginning of the VCD, including a music video of the theme song, Goodbye Boys is quite enjoyable in the sense of its realism, the way the characters, a bunch of 8 scout Fifth Formers on a journey of walking 100km in Perak to complete the King’s Scout requirements, interact with each other in slangs and their daily language, ranging from Malay to Hokkien and Cantonese to, of course, English.

We had a few good laughs at the things we saw: the guys’ antics, their friendship that was constantly being tested, the multitude of personalities in each and every one of them. It was, in fact, somewhat awkward (at least, for me) to see a lot of ourselves in the characters, as if a part of us were being represented in the (small) screen.

Much as I liked Sepet and Gubra, there were plenty of scenes that were too draggy for me that I found myself yawning at times. Goodbye Boys wasn’t that terrible in its dragginess, the pace was fine and, like Jon said, when the movie was starting to get draggy, something else happened to start catching our attention.

The scenery of what was supposed to be Ipoh in 1990 was luscious, things we didn’t expect to see nor really notice in real life. Being city boys and girls that we are, I’ve never really seen a Chinese bus conductor (much less a woman, since all the bus conductors that I’ve seen were guys, and most of the time, Malays and Indians and even foreigners), so imagine my surprise when I saw one right in the movie. (I was told Chinese bus conductors are common in Penang.)

An eye opener alright.

Plotwise it was alright, but could’ve been better. Seeing one of the boys clutching our Form 5 Biology book (exact same cover, if I’m not mistaken), talking about SPM, wondering about future, whether to take engineering or law - our exact same antics when we were 17 like them was quite surreal. And the boys’ school principal reminds us of our own Kak Ruby. >_>

‘tis probably one of the best local movies I’ve watched (given that I’ve watched only so many). Isn’t exactly that poignant, but it was a good effort nonetheless.

If you’re going to watch it (it was only released at very few cineplexes before), catch the rather unique and innovative ending at the end, that made the lot of us (Jess called it cute!), relaxing on the couches sit up and look.

This movie reminds me what it feels like being 17 again, even if that age was only a year ago. And I don’t feel any much older.