Hoedown Showdown
Director: Bhandit Thongdee
Year: 2002
Starring: Dao Mayuri (cowboy hat), Koong Suthirath
(son of father), Roong Suriya (juice maker), Sunaree, Apaporn Nakornsawan
(factory worker), Kasem Komsun (lost boyfriend), Yingyong Yodbuangam (the
cop), Looknok Suphaporn (fruit seller) and many more!
Time: 1 hour 56 minutes
It's all about the music here. Though there
is a story of sorts in the film - basically this is an affectionate all-star
salute to a type of Thai music called Luk Tung. As best as I can figure
out this is their version of country music - popular in the rural areas
of Thailand. The songs seem to generally be slow plaintive ballads about
lost love and loneliness and sung with an aching heart. If you have seen
Monrak Transistor, I think the songs from that film would be considered
Luk Tung. I don't know a thing about it, but I did enjoy listening to it.
It's the kind of music you would want to play sitting on a porch in the
cool late night and allow the sad notes to wander out into the darkness.
The cast as I understand it (from this review
on LoveHKFilm.com)
consists almost entirely of well-known Luk Tung singers - and at the end
of the film they identify them all (but in Thai) and it seems that there
are tons of cameos in the film as well. Taking this into account the acting
is more than acceptable and a few of the performances are really quite
good. There is a lot of music throughout as you would expect, but none
of the stars sound all that great - because they are of course not supposed
to be stars! - until the final twenty minutes when they are all finally
allowed to really do their stuff - and its like wow - that person has a
great voice!
The plot is fairly simple but effective for its
purpose of bringing together all these singing stars. An old man believes
he is dying and his last wish is to bring lovers of Luk Tung together in
one place - so he organizes a contest with a prize of 1,000,000 baht (about
$25,000). Every wannabe Luk Tung singer in Thailand descends on Bangkok
to try for the prize money and each one of them has a story. A monk wants
to win the money to fix the temple, another to help his village, another
to prove to his father his ability, another is looking for her man who
left her three years previously to seek his fame as a singer and she never
heard from him again, another is a hostess at a karaoke bar that wants
to get out of that life and so on. The film develops each of their stories
as best as it can with so many strings to pull. Surprisingly, they all
add up to a sweet emotional little fluffy film that I quite enjoyed.
My rating for this film: 6.5