While watching I’mPerfect, this year’s Metro Manila Film Festival Best Picture, I kept thinking about Garry Marshall’s 1999 cult film The Other Sister.

I was in high school when I first saw it, and I bawled at the wedding scene. Juliette Lewis and Giovanni Ribisi played two intellectually disabled young people in love, Carla and Danny, and the comparison keeps surfacing as I watch I’mPerfect.

Sigrid Andrea Bernardo tells the story of Jessica and Jiro, two young people with Down syndrome played by Krystel Go and Earl Jonathan Amaba. With charm, ease onscreen, an expressive face, and a conversational tone, Go’s Best Actress win at the MMFF is deserved.

Both the Hollywood film and I’mPerfect share similar themes of overprotection, autonomy, and the anxiety families feel when romantic love enters the picture. If The Other Sister centers on a sheltered daughter with a fiercely protective mother, I’mPerfect flips the script. Here, it is Jiro who comes from a wealthy, tightly managed household, with an overprotective mother played by Lorna Tolentino.

It is commendable of Nathan Studios to cast actors with Down syndrome in the lead roles. I have a first cousin with Down syndrome, now 32, whom I grew up with until high school (he is now based in Europe with my aunt and his siblings). Immediately, I feel fondness for the characters.

Bernardo’s signature style is intact. As in her previous films like Ang Huling Cha-Cha ni Anita (2013) and Kita Kita(2017), restraint, conversational dialogue, and slow-motion dancing are present in I’mPerfect.

But the story itself plays it safe.

Jessica is written as a sassy young woman from a low-income family, raised by a hardworking tailor (Sylvia Sanchez). Jessica’s long-absent father (Joey Marquez) returns to add a little drama and commentary on parents unable to cope with children with disabilities.

On the other side are Jiro’s parents, both doctors, and his younger brother Ryan, played by Zaijian Jaranilla. Their concerns are predictable, but their arguments are redundant. The film keeps circling the same point from Ryan: trust them, let them choose, let them live. But the issue is not the message; it is how little resistance the story puts up against it.

Unlike The Other Sister, which slowly builds romantic tension before letting the couple settle into domestic life, I’mPerfect rushes straight into devotion. Jessica and Jiro meet and almost immediately fall in love. Because they lack normal people’s narcissism, insecurity, and fear of rejection, they declare their love early, with the film pandering to cuteness.

Because there is no buildup, there is nothing to test. Worse, Jessica and Jiro never argue. They do not clash in ways that reveal character. They do not hurt each other and then choose to stay.

It is a cute, frictionless romantic story, but it lacks character. Even people with Down syndrome get angry. They experience the same basic feelings as anyone else: happiness, frustration, sadness, jealousy, affection, anger. Here, it is all happiness and a little rebellion, but their running away together feels like nothing but limerence.

When the couple runs away and settles into domestic life in Mindoro, the film loses momentum. There is no sense of discovery, no excitement in watching them figure things out, since Jessica is already established as a capable cook early in the film. Jiro is conveniently given a job as a rose cutter. Independence arrives neatly packaged.

The film also touches on medical realities but handles them carelessly. Spoiler alert: Jessica develops a fever, the springboard for a very predictable, abrupt, and lazy ending. Why is she not given paracetamol? Why do their families not detect that she is feverish when they come to visit? Instead, Jessica is dancing and energetic.

And then there is Jiro’s yaya, who is a big character early in the film yet suddenly disappears. Did she die, or was she fired while I stepped out to use the restroom?

I’mPerfect is sincere and well-intentioned, and its casting is significant. As a film, though, it is cautious, predictable, and dramatically thin. It offers visibility but very little tension, risk, or surprise.

There is also a scene that vaguely reminds me of the American drama-fantasy The Boy Who Could Fly, which follows a teenage boy regarded as “different” and possibly autistic. He, like Jessica in this film, hopes he can fly—a literal fantasy and a metaphor for escape, freedom, and emotional survival. While the boy in the 1986 Hollywood film is abused by his father, Jessica wants to fly because? She is never given any real struggle and looks perfectly fine.

I’mPerfect is sincere, sure. It is well-intentioned, and its casting is historically significant. But as a film, it feels sterile, cautious, and dramatically inert.

There is an unspoken rule in local cinema that once disability enters the frame, criticism must soften. No, I don’t agree. Representation alone does not automatically make a film good.

2 out of 5 stars

I’mPerfect is one of the eight entries in the Metro Manila Film Festival, which is currently playing in cinemas nationwide.