A highly-legendary quotation from a movie has never been so ironically uttered by someone so self-described. The soap opera "Bituing Walang Ningning" is exactly what "second rate, trying hard, copycat" meant and much more.
"Bituin" is the remake of the classic rags-to-riches movie of the same title starring Sharon Cuneta as the heroine and the incomparable Cherie Gil as the villain everybody loved. The TV incarnate's characters were ineffectively portrayed by Sarah Geronimo in the Sharon role and Angelika dela Cruz as an embarrassing and pitiful version of the Cherie Gil character. To make matters worse, the writers inserts tiring soap opera elements into the story to make it interesting, with disastrous results.
"Bituin" would have been a mediocre enough soap opera with its mediocre story and mediocre characters if it were not for Angelika dela Cruz' horrible impersonation of Lavinia. Angelika could have made the character her own if she inserted personal acting touches and originality to the role; however, she begins to emulate Cherie Gil's Lavinia, copying every batted eyelash and swagger that the classic character did. The result: a second-rate, trying-hard, Cherie Gil copycat.
ABS-CBN has successfully degraded themselves as the TV fad-makers to the eventual fad-followers as they erringly assumed that remaking classic Filipino movies into soap operas was the "in" thing to do. After the embarrassing turns of "Kampanerang Kuba" and "Panday", one might think that the producers, writers and directors have learned a valuable lesson. However, knowing the hard heads at the network, these lessons went into one ear but out the other.
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