48 Hours - `Lost' by Team `Jalan Ampas'


Genre - Holiday Film
`Want to getaway' Quotient - Only as far Sungei Road
Greatest moment - When we felt finally saw Mas Selamat after 2 months of fruitless search
Worst moment - The transitlink card seller scenes (had no idea how he fits into the story)
Production value - This is the most labour intensive production. I define labour intensiveness by the following equation:
Labour Intensiveness = Expensiveness of the look or feel of end-product divided by number of people involved in the production

Lost is a drama about this mother and son pair who go on a Holiday to Singapore. The mother is Japanese and the son look half Malay half Japanese. They visit a few sites including the Merlion (wonder if they bumped into that cheesy couple from Rezzureaction pictures). Finally, they find themselves in Sungei road shopping for rubbish. What a holiday! (my heart was speaking). Then the little boy loses his playing gadget and in the process of finding it bumps into a weird man who was trying to tout things. He does find his gadget eventually but curiosity leads him to another man. This man was shabbily dressed and seemed to be wandering around in no particular direction. The boy follows to no substantial consequence. Eventually, he finds his mother back and they carry on with their holiday in Singapore. Then, comes that epiphanic moment in which the camera pans from mother and son to a Mas Selemat ad (but using another fictional name) and that mysterious shabby guy was actually the face in the ad.

It was another very concerted effort by a very large group of people. In fact, maybe Team `Jalan Ampas' rounded up the whole of Jalan Ampas. They had the highest turnout at the Eng Wah cinema screening. It was about close to 20 people, all I assumed were involved in the production. But note comments about the labour intensiveness above. I felt the story was like family entertainment with some cute quirks and mildly clever touches. It is family entertainment due to the focus on the innocence of the child and it as quirky mainly due to the `Mas Selemat' off shoot. The problem was that the little mishaps were not tightly linked, almost inconsequential and this led to a rather pointless drama. But in the context of the having fun under 48 hours, guess throwing in ideas for gambles were additive to the fun quotient. However, if they did one thing differently, it would have upped the ante on the `Holidayness' of it all : don't set it in Singapore, we are all DYING to getaway from here (for holiday I mean)!
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