SYNOPSIS:
Tom and Jerry come from a typical middle-class Singaporean family.
Their parents are too busy at work to communicate sufficiently
with them and instead believe they can compensate for this with
material things. Tom's friend, Cheng Cai also faces communication
problems with his father who believes in punishing him physically.
This leads to greater rebellion from the child...How will these
families resolve these issues?
MOVIE
REVIEW :
“I
Not Stupid 2” is one of the rare sequels that not only
matched the original but also managed to exceed it in terms
of capturing the emotional depth and effectively conveying
the underlying theme of the film
This time, the focus is on the problem of communication failure
between the parent, teacher and the child via two stereotypical
Singapore families, the Yeo family and the Lim family. The
Yeo family represents a busy middle-income family whose parents
are always more busy chasing the rat race. Their children
are well provided for but the lack of time and understanding
tears them apart. The Lim family on the other hand represents
the difficulties of a single dad lower income family. The
boorish dad who had just come out of prison truly loves his
only son but only knows how to beat his son to teach him.
Both families,
although on the different spectrum of financial income and
status, faces the same problem that perhaps most Singaporean
families can identify with: the lack of understanding and
communication between the older and younger generation.
Using
a few actual incidents that hogged our local newspaper’s
headlines in recent years, director Jack Neo utilized the
issues of public canning in school, the mandarin campaign
and the effectiveness of blogging to emphasize the reasons
for the failure of communication between parent and child.
Besides effectively conveying the message, it also provided
the homeland feel to it that many Singaporeans could either
relate or identify with.
Another familiarity would be the returning of the two young
actors Shawn Lee and Joshua Ang from the original film. Agreeing
with what many had pointed out, these two actors had became
teenage heartthrobs within a span of four years and looks
were not the only thing that they had improved upon: their
performance had turned up yet another notch in this sequel.
Joining these two “veterans” is Ashley Leong who
took over the comedic role in this trio of kids. Besides providing
some of the side splitting humorous moments in this movie,
he also provided the most of the narration that enabled viewers
to see the issue from a child’s view.
Beside
the young stars, the cast of Xiang Yun, Huang Yi Liang and
Jack Neo (in double duties) were just as effective in presenting
the adult’s perspective and reasons in the communication
breakdown, bringing an effective balanced look at what is
going wrong in many Singapore families.
Even
though I Not Stupid 2 is filled with comical moments, this
is a much darker film compared to the original one and this
one will definitely tug most viewers’ heartstrings.
Kudos to Jack Neo and his production for presenting an issue
that is so close to our hearts and even presents us with a
rather simple yet effective solution that could just work.
I Not Stupid 2 is simply not to be missed.
SPECIAL
FEATURES :
The Making of (22.57mins) - “The Making
of” segment basically covers the success of the first
film and the reasons for Jack Neo to make sequel. The main
cast also shared their views on this movie, the characters
that they portray and joys of working with each other. This
segment also charts the progress that Shawn Lee and Joshua
Ang has made from the original film to this sequel. This segment
also briefly touches on the special effects used in this film
and the difficulties for the actors who are not used to them.
It’s not one of the best making-of features that I have
seen and they could have covered the production and research
for this movie’s material in detail. Another complaint
would be that some of the outtakes and MTV segments were repeated
in this and the following segments. Those repeated materials
could have been removed and the time used to feature other
more interesting information to cover the production more
extensively.
I
Not Stupid MTV (1.29mins) - Contains the “Jay
Chou” style of rap that was used for this theme song.
It had been featured in both the movie and “the making
of segment” so if viewers who can’t get enough
of the young star, Joshua Ang rapping away, here is the special
feature for the fans to have their fill.
The
deleted scenes (30.41mins) - Some scenes are deleted
for the obvious pacing need. They are repetitive in nature
and if they were left in the final cut, it would have dragged
the pace of the movie and would likely lessen the impact of
the message that they are trying to put across.
However
the deleted scenes were sorely missing any form of commentary
from either the director or people involved with this film
production. One of the longest deleted segments featured an
alternative version of the climatic finale that featured a
similar finale except some differences in pacing, location
and the time that the event had occurred. It would have been
interesting to know why one ending was chosen over the other.
The
outtakes (19.54mins) -
The NG segments features a number
of bad takes during the process of filming.
While some are infectiously hilarious, there were some that
were annoying and you might wonder how could someone so seasoned
in the acting field could flubbed his line so often.
MOVIE
RATING:
 
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Richard Lim Jr
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