Trending CapitalMovie review: She’s Dating the Gangster

By Raymart Escopel

The recent movie of the Philippines’ teen superstars has prepared a roller coaster ride of emotions to its audience. Every scene in the movie tickles everyone’s funny bones, provides a nostalgic feeling through flashbacks, allows viewers to fall in love with the story, and the reason to cry because of its realistic approach to life.

Starting off as a hit story in Wattpad, a writing community website, “She’s Dating the Gangster” was given turned into mainstream when it was developed into a movie starring teen royalties Daniel Padilla and Kathryn Bernardo.

With the effective portrayal of the characters of Athena Dizon (Bernardo) and Kenji delos Reyes (Padilla), combined with the great love story, it is with no inkling of surprise that this recent movie will be a hit.

Originally written by Bianca Bernardino, the plot of “She’s Dating the Gangster” is actually an accumulated idea out of her and her friends’ experiences on love. The book has been added with more brilliance with the artistic direction of Cathy Garcia-Molina who effectively enticed and lured the viewers towards the plot of the story.

“She’s Dating the Gangster” portrays a great love story tested by time.

The story of the film evolves with the main characters past love affair which did not attain any closure as an unfortunate case of “bad timing.” To give their love story a happy ending before they run out of time, their new generation tried to reunite them.

Their epic love story was retold as Kenneth (son of Kenji) and Kelay (niece of Athena), still portrayed by Padilla and Bernardo, recalled the love story of Kenji and Athena.

The movie also tells the story of how love changes a person to become better. It teaches viewers the lesson of how important forgiveness.

“She’s Dating the Gangster” earned a total of P15 million on its first day of showing in July 17. Despite the wrath of typhoon “Glenda” which swept Metro Manila on the same day, the movie is still considered a phenomenal success./PN