The boys are a ready-made pop-folk group, complete with boy-band good looks.

I don’t understand why Bakwit Boys is labeled as a musical film. Larawan is a musical. The Greatest Showman is a musical. The Sound of Music is a musical. Moulin Rouge is a musical.

BAKWIT Boys tells the story of brothers Elias (Lance Varena), Sonny (Mackie Empuerto), Joey (Ryle Santiago) and Philip (Nikko Natividad.) contributed photo A musical film braids the songs sung by the characters into the narrative, serving as both dialogue and plot advancement. Bakwit Boys, however, is a tale about an amateur music group—and the movie has singing in it only because the characters are musicians that are showcasing their original songs. So Bakwit Boys is more like Inside Llewyn Davis, about a folk singer struggling to attain success, or That Thing You Do!, about a fictional one-hit-wonder pop band in the ‘60s.

Jason Paul Laxamana’s Bakwit Boys, one of two Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino (PPP) main features that cinched the Audience Choice Award (the other was The Day After Valentine’s, also by Laxamana), tells the story of four evacuee (bakwit) brothers in Pampanga (the director’s hometown) with a hidden talent for composing and belting out sweet and simple folk tunes with their good ol’ dependable guitar.

In short, the boys are a ready-made pop-folk group, complete with boy-band good looks — good looks which are eventually hidden by large farmer straw hats when they finally achieve stardom.

The musical brothers are composed of Elias (Lance Varena); Hashtag members Nikko Natividad and Ryle Santiago, as Phillip and Joey, respectively; and Mackie Empuerto as Sonny, who does not resemble any of his brothers but is an important member of the band.

Hailing from typhoon-ravaged Isabela, the boys are penniless and temporarily staying with their grandpa in a farm somewhere in Pampanga. For some odd reason, the grandpa, played by Nanding Josef, speaks in a shouty voice. However, he does not have hearing problems here, unlike his character in another PPP main feature, the remarkable Signal Rock.

THE movie is Jason Paul Laxamana’s second entry in Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino. (Contributed photo) The boys are not struggling musicians. Neither do they dream of achieving success in the industry. What these boys want is cash— to help Grandpa and to send money to their parents in Isabela.

The need for cash drives these boys to perform in the town fiesta. And I don’t know why the boys are performing with dirty faces (a poorly smudged black eyeshadow on their mestizo faces). A few days have passed since their evacuation to Pampanga. Can’t they at least wash their faces before performing in front of a crowd? Does one have to sport an unwashed face to look like a bakwit? You are an evacuee, not a hobo. An evacuee with access to water in your grandpa’s house.

Anyway, their cute song number “Ligtas Ka Na” gets the attention of a visiting city girl, Rose (a remarkable singer, Devon Seron). Or perhaps she’s attracted to one of the three pretty boys. To be frank, the boys can sing, but they’re not eye-popping wunderkids. They’re not the Jackson 5. Or Hanson.

Like a mother hen frustrated by her own thwarted dreams (she used to have a band called “Chubby Singsong”), Rose adopts the bakwit boys and pushes them to work for their success. That’s the only time we see the boys develop a dream for a career in the music biz.

The problem with Bakwit Boys is that you never experience the boys’ desire to sing for the world. They just seem to have a crush on Rose, accommodating this persistent pretty girl, just wanting to please her, and then perhaps get rich and famous as a bonus. Which is not wrong, but it takes away any sense of passion in the story. Rose, whose ambition is clearer, seems more driven than these amateur singers.

There are characters appearing with not much significance, only serving as a weak narrative support.

The brothers have no personality, just like their shouting grandpa. With a dull, facile dialogue, the boys are a sketch, and interchangeable. Only the eldest, Elias, sparks a little character; he is the antagonist in the group, the crusher of dreams, who, in the middle of the story, abruptly shifts from a greedy villain to a Romeo (but he has an explanation for that). There is also no sense of drama in the boys’ struggle, because they spend more time hitting each other’s head and scrambling to please Rose.

There are characters appearing with not much significance, only serving as a weak narrative support, such as a group of NPA, led by Menggie Cobarrubias, who only shows up one time just so Elias has a reason to be more stressed about money. Then there’s the gay mustachioed man as a tool for the kids to get temporary jobs. A few other familiar actors appear, but they are more fillers than relevant characters.

The film’s conflict is predictable, and Laxamana injects a preachy declaration how the “righteous path is unfair.” The boys’ stardom happens because of bribery and ill-gotten wealth, and not by miraculous luck or inspiring hard work, which makes the story devoid of thrill.

Bakwit Boys, which aims to be an entertaining light-hearted fare with sociopolitical undertones, offers some painful truth: in the pursuit of artistic dreams, money is always a conflict. But, alas, the film is bland and disjointed, and feels oftentimes rushed.