If I Love a Boy (2019)

Works as Teasers but Fail as Standalone Short Movies

“If I Love a Boy” is a set of 5 unrelated short stories with a BL theme. They were released as four separate short films with “Everybody Run” and “Night Before Everything” released together with each of these two storylines cutting back and forth between the two stories. At first, I thought that these short stories were prequels to the “Thank God It’s Friday” series which was marketed by the same production house, at the same time, with the same actors as the If I Love a Boy films were released. That of course is not the case as TGIF has a completely different storyline and the actors play entirely different roles.

If the stories in “If I Love a Boy” we’re in fact prequels to a future movie or series then you could forgive the ambiguous and in one case, bizarre endings to the stories. As standalone short films they do a decent job of character development but they don’t capitalize on that by giving them satisfactory endings. Each story leave more questions that could be answered with another 5-10 min of development or again using them as a stage as prequels for a longer movie or series, as each are good teasers but not much else.

Maybe the storytellers we’re trying to leave the audience with some profound thought or dilemma to ponder. The titles of the movies come in like breaking news headlines for a news broadcast. If that’s the case, what message or profound thought are they trying to convey or make you think about? Maybe they were trying to make you think what would you do in that situation? What ever it is, it doesn't come out clearly.

The production values for each of the films are surprisingly high for storylines and acting that are arguably at the level of a student project. So there was some money placed into this project which makes you think that there’s a greater purpose to the films. Speaking of acting, it’s very obvious that each of the actors are new and green. Not necessarily a knock as inexperience can give a natural sense of innocence and genuineness that more polished actors sometimes lose. It will be interesting to see how they develop moving forward. Ball and Poori in “Everbody Run” seem to be the least green of the group with their acting being the least wooden of the group.

Overall, I think these short films are a missed opportunity that I’m hoping that the producers will jump on as the next project for this set of actors after TGIF. Each story wets the appetite but they need to follow through on filling the belly.

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Think Back to When You Were Young.....

I am reticent to call them BL but they do involve the blossoming of very young feelings of romance between juvenile boys. I am not sure what the reason for their production except for simply giving these young actors an opportunity to hone in on their acting talents. They are simple stories of bromances, or maybe simple connections of friendship between boys, or even ‘puppy love’. There is nothing elaborate here nor is there is there any deep hidden meanings. It is just what happens sometimes with young boys when they realize that they may be ‘different’ or they now think differently about some of their friends or guys in their age group.
Sure, these small vignettes are not very long and are not particularly well acted (they tended to be very wooden) and do look more like a training rehearsal for more roles for them, but that is not what made these stories very entertaining and effective. While they are raw, there are some spurts of genuine emotions able to break through and shine in each of them. They are soooooo young and I can imagine that roles like this would make them perhaps uncomfortable. However, they did a pretty good job of showing that in subtle ways they are attracted to another guy. We know it is ‘puppy love’. The production value of these tiny snippets is surprisingly good and so is the camera work. If you like, you can read my full review of this charming series at ppbongi.medium.com.

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