Noo Hin: The critical response

Bits and pieces and little threads of information to somehow tie in here.

First, I guess I'll start with the news from Wednesday's Soopsip column in The Nation, which reports that Noo-Hin: The Movie remained the top Thai film at the local box office last week, taking in more than 22 million baht (about US$574,000).

This is despite the opening last week of cute rom-com, The Memory, starring an actor-pop star named Rattapoom 'Film' Tokongsab and an actress-model-VJ named Paula Taylor, who are apparently superstars. The story involves Film portraying a superstar who is involved in a car accident in Northern Thailand and gets amnesia. He is rescued by some comically rustic Northern hilltribe folk. Paula portrays a photographer out to find out why Film is hanging around with hilltribe folk and is acting so strange. And they fall in love. Or something like that. Anyway, it made 17 million.

The animated elephant feature Khan Kluay has earned a total gross of 68 million after three weeks in cinemas. More discussion about Khan Kluay can be found over at Kaiju Shakedown, which is making a special effort to be nice, and there's a review at ThaiCinema.org.

Back to Noo-Hin.

Seems some Thai fans of the comic book are upset that Khun Milk's (Kotchakorn Supakarnkijkul) 38D boobs weren't big enough. I guess in the comic they are probably more like 48FFF - cartoonishly unreal - yet that's what folks apparently want to see in a live action film.

Turns out that Kotchakorn actually worn some silicone falsies for the role. And, if you've seen the film, you'll note the irony in that. And, Kotchakorn is actually a very young woman - she's still in high school, I've heard from an acquaintance, whose daughter attends the same same school.

Well, enough about boobs.

Kong Rithdee, back from Cannes, weighed in yesterday with a review in the Bangkok Post's Real Time section.

I think he actually liked it, and was able to detect some of the social commentary about the vanity of society, though he still had some criticisms:

To be frank, I'm not sure how much of the satirical note the filmmakers intended to put in Noo-Hin the Movie, which is being marketed as an all-out entertainment fare ... Perhaps I'm reading into things too much in the vain attempt to say something meaningful after having had no opportunity to do so with most Thai films released this year. Most of us will also lament the film's below-par production quality - the whole package looks like a rush job, and I wonder where the heck the art director was during the shoot. Moreover, the film plays along with the stereotype of Isaan humour; among the requisites are the presence of buffaloes, roast lizards, fermented fish, as well as the tongue-twisting Northeastern dialect, which gives the simplest word a droll touch.

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)