Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa... saw the trailer... got kinda excited... it's quite rare that Malaysians attempt epics... the last one I recall was Puteri Gunung Ledang... that one was not without faults, so I was under the impression that KRU Studios might've learned a thing or two...
HMM tells the story of the title character, and how he came into his own kingdom, the Kingdom of Langkasuka... started out with an anecdote, between the Chinese and the Romans, went through India, straight to Siam/Kedah/Langkasuka (but was nameless back then)... and then to Gerouda Island... Told in story form by one of his descendants...
My colleague got the invite for the premiere and asked if I would join... of course I would... I had seen the intriguing trailer and had heard of Stephen Rahman's excellent work in PGL The Musical...
As far as I can tell, it was a good effort but can't shake the feeling that HMM was more like a mash-up between Pirates of the Caribbean and The Lord of the Rings, but achieves neither feat... which was quite a shame...
Not too sure who's to blame for some of the things that went wrong with the film... the actors? the producers? the directors? the script writers? hmmm...
Don't get me wrong... it was enjoyable enough... I wasn't yawning or plotting deaths or going out of my mind or anything like that... but some tiny minute details bothered me and brought the movie down a couple of pegs... which was quite a shame really...
Let's break it down... Stephen Rahman Hughes... the star... the one who has the meatiest role and would be on screen for most of the movie... yes, he is handsome and has nice physique, but his Malay delivery was quite bland/bad... and that pretty much ruined it for me coz he spoke Malay more than half of the movie... so who's to blame? Stephen? The director for letting him speak monotonously and without feelings? The writers who wrote his lines?
Not to say that he is a bad actor... he was quite lively when he spoke the English lines... unfortunately (and am not sure where the fault lies for this one) the attempts to make a funny kinda fall flat... it seemed that Merong, in English mode, was painted up as a cardboard cutout of Jack Sparrow... Stephen Rahman is definitely no Johnny Depp... but to be fair, Stephen Rahman did embody the charisma of a monarch... and very believable as a warrior...
Hmm, guess KRU is really trying to be the Weta of Malaysia. All of their movies have CGI and special effects. Unfortunately for this movie, you can totally see it's CGI. It's not clean. And that annoyed the hell out of me... but then again... nah, not gonna go there...
Other than that, the movie's okay... and the local actors did quite a good job actually, Gandalf and all... although there is a slight tendency for them to be a bit over the top like the Indian Bapak Ayam... Manomaniam I think...
And just as a side note, the Roman prince looks like the late Heath Ledger and Mr Fantastic... Ioan Gruffurd... like their secret love child or something, hehehe...
KRU Studios is boldly going where no Malaysian studios have gone before... attempting such monumental tasks like superhero movies (Cicakman) and Malay myths (Magika) and now tackling epics... for me their endeavor has been mostly 50-50... but one has to applaud their efforts... :)
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