Multilicus
Poland
This review may contain spoilers
Annoying and subpar
For lack of imagination I’ll go with a bullet list for this one. Good things first (that’s going to be a short list):
- Perth is okay; not great, but okay, which still makes him stand out when compared to other cast members (I refuse to call most of them actors),
- eye candy - Phuwin and Pond spend some time shirtless and look mighty fine.
Now for the bad things – and there’s a lot of them.
- False premise and misleading merchandising.
According to the initial trailer, released in 2021 (and still available on GMMTV’s YT channel), as well as to an initial MDL tag for this show, it was supposed to be about a son of a mafia boss running away from danger after his father was killed. That’s not the case – Phiphop, Nueng’s father, is a very rich businessman dealing in hotels, and though not very popular (sometimes called a crook) he’s not a mafia boss. This reduced the ‘action potential’ of the show and made it less interesting. 5 out of 12 episodes take place at a high school, not on the run from thugs – for this part of the series the show is a subpar high school BL; again: not what the show was marketed as.
- Weak story and horrible pace for a pretentious show which takes itself far too seriously.
The story suffers from several things, mainly how bland it is and how it drags. Phiphop gets killed in episode 1, but it’s not until the end of episode 5 that Nueng gets on the run. The show loses momentum immediately – following 4 episodes take place on an island, weirdly separated and mostly unaffected by events of previous episodes. With only 3 episodes left to have a confrontation and conclusion, the closer we get to the end, the more things are rushed. Furthermore, the story is unbelievable – which many reviewers critical of NLMG already pointed out on multiple examples. How is it, that Nueng – son of a powerful businessman, hated and feared, gets bullied at school for so long? Why wasn’t he protected earlier? Why was this influential family basically unprotected – not just when Phiphop was killed by a single gunman, but also for many weeks after that? Who thought that Palm – Nueng’s peer – will be a good bodyguard? How is it, that later episodes – especially those that take place on the island – are so unaffected by earlier events? It’s just baffling that after 5 episodes of an uninteresting school drama we get 4 episodes of uninteresting boyfriend time on a tropical island – and that between those 5 and 4 episodes an assassination attempt takes place. The stakes are nonexistent: all the shooting, injuring and even killing of secondary characters falls flat, fake, unimportant, since even the main characters don’t seem to care about it. At the same time the series wants to present itself as serious (see the ‘serious’ and/or ‘dramatic’ music used in ‘important’ moments and scenes – I don’t recall a single time the music was properly applied and didn’t seem over-the-top), mature and for grown-ups – which fails miserably.
- Absent chemistry and acting.
The young cast did a very poor job, with Perth being an exception. Phuwin is very good in portraying obnoxious, unlikeable characters (see Pi in FUTS) and Nueng is like that for most of the series – I doubt the showrunners wanted that. Pond is a bit better, but it’s not acting – he’s not as wooden and lifeless as I feared he’ll be, but the only reason you can watch it is because he’s goodlooking. Chimon is mostly uninteresting and at times irritating; same goes for June, who’s character was both written and portrayed as annoying. Nat plays the least intimidating villain ever, and Pawin is generally underused and doesn’t seem comfortable playing a bad guy. Jeeez, this show really comes from the same company which employs Nanon, Ohm, Khaotung, First, Fourth, Gemini or Mix, who – despite of being amateurs – can express more with a short grin or brief gaze than this entire cast?
As with many BLs, the show could have been saved by chemistry between the characters – it usually falls to the main couple to generate most of it. Unfortunately there’s no chemistry between Pond and Phuwin. There was barely any of it in FUTS and in their “Little BIG World” they gave me a vibe of two office workers forced to complete a project together (compare this to Earth and Mix, who seem to have genuine fun working with each other on EarthMix Space and their BLs). Chimon and Perth never felt like a couple and their chemistry is nonexistent.
To sum it up: NLMG is a disappointing, boring and annoying BL; steer clear of it unless you’re a diehard PondPhuwin fan.
- Perth is okay; not great, but okay, which still makes him stand out when compared to other cast members (I refuse to call most of them actors),
- eye candy - Phuwin and Pond spend some time shirtless and look mighty fine.
Now for the bad things – and there’s a lot of them.
- False premise and misleading merchandising.
According to the initial trailer, released in 2021 (and still available on GMMTV’s YT channel), as well as to an initial MDL tag for this show, it was supposed to be about a son of a mafia boss running away from danger after his father was killed. That’s not the case – Phiphop, Nueng’s father, is a very rich businessman dealing in hotels, and though not very popular (sometimes called a crook) he’s not a mafia boss. This reduced the ‘action potential’ of the show and made it less interesting. 5 out of 12 episodes take place at a high school, not on the run from thugs – for this part of the series the show is a subpar high school BL; again: not what the show was marketed as.
- Weak story and horrible pace for a pretentious show which takes itself far too seriously.
The story suffers from several things, mainly how bland it is and how it drags. Phiphop gets killed in episode 1, but it’s not until the end of episode 5 that Nueng gets on the run. The show loses momentum immediately – following 4 episodes take place on an island, weirdly separated and mostly unaffected by events of previous episodes. With only 3 episodes left to have a confrontation and conclusion, the closer we get to the end, the more things are rushed. Furthermore, the story is unbelievable – which many reviewers critical of NLMG already pointed out on multiple examples. How is it, that Nueng – son of a powerful businessman, hated and feared, gets bullied at school for so long? Why wasn’t he protected earlier? Why was this influential family basically unprotected – not just when Phiphop was killed by a single gunman, but also for many weeks after that? Who thought that Palm – Nueng’s peer – will be a good bodyguard? How is it, that later episodes – especially those that take place on the island – are so unaffected by earlier events? It’s just baffling that after 5 episodes of an uninteresting school drama we get 4 episodes of uninteresting boyfriend time on a tropical island – and that between those 5 and 4 episodes an assassination attempt takes place. The stakes are nonexistent: all the shooting, injuring and even killing of secondary characters falls flat, fake, unimportant, since even the main characters don’t seem to care about it. At the same time the series wants to present itself as serious (see the ‘serious’ and/or ‘dramatic’ music used in ‘important’ moments and scenes – I don’t recall a single time the music was properly applied and didn’t seem over-the-top), mature and for grown-ups – which fails miserably.
- Absent chemistry and acting.
The young cast did a very poor job, with Perth being an exception. Phuwin is very good in portraying obnoxious, unlikeable characters (see Pi in FUTS) and Nueng is like that for most of the series – I doubt the showrunners wanted that. Pond is a bit better, but it’s not acting – he’s not as wooden and lifeless as I feared he’ll be, but the only reason you can watch it is because he’s goodlooking. Chimon is mostly uninteresting and at times irritating; same goes for June, who’s character was both written and portrayed as annoying. Nat plays the least intimidating villain ever, and Pawin is generally underused and doesn’t seem comfortable playing a bad guy. Jeeez, this show really comes from the same company which employs Nanon, Ohm, Khaotung, First, Fourth, Gemini or Mix, who – despite of being amateurs – can express more with a short grin or brief gaze than this entire cast?
As with many BLs, the show could have been saved by chemistry between the characters – it usually falls to the main couple to generate most of it. Unfortunately there’s no chemistry between Pond and Phuwin. There was barely any of it in FUTS and in their “Little BIG World” they gave me a vibe of two office workers forced to complete a project together (compare this to Earth and Mix, who seem to have genuine fun working with each other on EarthMix Space and their BLs). Chimon and Perth never felt like a couple and their chemistry is nonexistent.
To sum it up: NLMG is a disappointing, boring and annoying BL; steer clear of it unless you’re a diehard PondPhuwin fan.
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