'Kwaliteit 2': New comedy a self-indulgent prank

Joko Anwar, Contributor, Jakarta

Kwaliteit 2 (Quality 2) Comedy Starring Bramatyo W., Rahadian, Mualimin, Dennis Adhiswara, Yunita David Directed by Dennis Adhiswara *1/2 (out of ****)

Twenty-two-year-old Dennis Adhiswara just made his mark as the youngest movie director in the country with his sport/comedy/action/martial-arts Kwaliteit 2 (Quality 2).

While his feature debut could serve as an inspiring accomplishment to countless moviemaker wannabes out there, it instead comes as an affront to the growing enthusiasm and hope for an established local film industry.

The fact that major movie theaters would screen such a poor sophomoric outing should upset many who yearn for local movies made with competence, at least technically.

Kwaliteit 2 qualifies only as an amateurish movie to be shown at student events. Your buddies would definitely have a great time watching their friends or themselves doing silly things in it. But those who pay to see it in theaters are likely to find it a painful experience.

Don't get me wrong. The movie hints that director Dennis, who also wrote, edited, produced and acts, has some interesting, sometimes outrageous ideas. But he would only be able to realize them on the screen through learning about the technicalities.

It is also enlightening to know that not all aspiring moviemakers only dream of being the next Quentin Tarantino or Donny Boyle. Dennis seems to be firmly into parody and gross-out comedy.

The movie begins with a scene where a little boy is playing with a remote-controlled toy car. Three boys take the car and destroy it. However, this particularly long sequence has almost nothing to do with the rest of the story.

Next thing we see is a chubby college student named Santoso taking a poop, with his other housemates restlessly lined up in front of the bathroom.

We learn that Santoso and his buddy Sly are college juniors who always get bullied by their seniors.

In a very contrived scene, Santoso and Sly end up having a pillow fight with their seniors above the swimming pool. Whoever can stay above the water wins; Santoso and Sly lose.

An old man who works as the pool cleaner tells Santoso and Sly that the bullies win because they have mastered the martial art of pillow fighting that he teachers.

The two losers end up being the old man's students in the quest to win the upcoming college sports Olympiad.

We understand that director/writer Dennis wants to make a sport/comedy movie such as Water Boy or Iron Ladies while giving a nod to old Indonesian martial-art flicks. He even shows a clip from an Eddy S. Jonathan movie.

However, it takes maturity to poke fun at corniness. At this level, Dennis fails to rise above an object of ridicule.

In the next scenes, Dennis seems to be having too much fun, and his gross-out jokes cross the line into utter tastelessness.

During one pillow fight scene, Dennis shows a man watching the show while defecating into the river, with the excrement shown falling down. Since Dennis is also one of the producers (the executive producer is his father), it's understandable that he gets away with it because he is calling the shots. But he shouldn't have.

Fortunately, most of the main actors give decent performances since they seem to be relaxed. Some of them are even delightful to watch, including the actors who play Santoso and Sly.

But the story is hampered in making any progress by too many subplots that have little to do with the main plot.

The bit about Santoso winning money in a photo competition is only an excuse for Dennis to put on a poorly conceived, long chase scene, involving a bread cart and two bikes used to sell the traditional food siomay.

The movie goes on for almost two hours, definitely way too long for something like this. Shot poorly on video, it will deeply offend those who demand quality movies.

It seems that the movie has been shot by a pedestrian just handed a video camera. What is missing is the sudden zoom-ins and zoom-outs used by local old films. Well, they may as well have used them.

Other technical departments are also irritatingly inept.

The movie must have been edited by a chain saw, or at least a broken computer mouse. Despite the fact that there is someone billed as a sound engineer, the quality of the audio matches that of any home video.

Often, we cannot even hear what the characters are saying because the music (not good either) or the background atmosphere is too loud.

These shortcomings often sabotage potentially funny scenes with good ideas. Good ideas are in fact what director Dennis only has to brag about, but he can be proud of that.

His ideas are definitely better than what so-called senior movie director Richard Buntario showed in his 5 Sehat 4 Sempurna and Cinta 24 Karat. In fact, Kwaliteit 2 is far better than those two so-called movies which only succeeded in torturing the audience.

Even so, Kwaliteit 2 is far from satisfactory. The audience deserves something better.

We understand that Dennis is only trying to make a silly movie, but even that requires seriousness and competence.

I don't think the fact that his incompetent effort made it to major movie theaters is Dennis' fault.

Next time, the grown-ups should know better that encouraging young moviemakers does not mean letting them get away with murder. In this case, the murder of quality moviemaking.