
“Seasons” is a tedious, tepid and inane romance about a woman who toys with her boy “friend” and reaps the consequences.
It’s meant to be a rom-com, but it isn’t the least bit funny. The leads are pretty, and Lovie Poe sings and co-wrote the screenplay. But it limps along from one improbable turn of events to the next, all of it meant to “test” a couple who give us no “spark” to make us root for them. Ever.
That’s something that might be missing from the long-term coupling of Charlie (Poe) and beau Kurt (Carlo Aquino). They look good together. He’s a 30something bar owner always coming to her rescue, propping up the part-time singer/full-time something in advertising — I think — always there for her at friend and family events.
But the “spark” was never there for this relationship to progress. Now good time Charlie is turning 32, concerned that her friends are well into marriages and child-rearing. So why doesn’t she feel more for “my best friend?”
If he’s got an issue, maybe that’s reflected in her quick-to-out-them-as-mismatched sex-partners at a group gathering. Maybe the ways she takes him for granted play into it as well.
Sure, she’s beautiful and fond of the bare-midriff look, which she always pulls off. But even Kurt knows that the gal-pal who calls him “Uggo” and who answers to him calling her “Uggo” is permanently in the “friend zone.”
As Charlie narrates the story (in Tagalog/Filipino/English, “Tanglish?” with subtitles, or dubbed), she made “the worst decision of my life three years ago.” That was when she taunted Kurt into trying online dating — with someone else — and she let him talk her into submitting to the entreaties of her lovesick co-worker, Hans (Jolo Estrada).
Charlie got stuck with a work “buddy” never destined to be a beau. And Charlie went out of her way to hook Kurt up with a cute cake-baker, Jane (Sarah Edwards) at a local restaurant.
As Charlie watches Kurt fall in love, she figures out her mistake. Only a desperate move — faking a pregnancy — can stop that Kurt-Jane trip to the altar, or so she thinks.
Poe’s a passable singer and perky leading lady, but this character is bland and there’s little she can do to fix that. Aquino has almost no screen presence. Yes, he used to be in a boy band.
There are situations here that have worked in other rom-coms. But you’ve got to get more “com” and at least a hint of “rom” in there if you want this to play.
Director Easy Ferrer lets this handsomely-mounted production just mope along until it slows to a crawl, never wringing a laugh or big romantic moment out of it.
“Seasons” isn’t as chaste as the romances we see from much of the rest of Asia. But there’s no edge to it, no stakes to the love affair and little for the viewer to invest in or root for. It settles on “insipid” and never manages to rise above it.
Rating: TV-MA, sexual situations and profanity
Cast: Lovie Poe, Carlo Aquino
Credits: Directed by Easy Ferrer, scripted by Dwein Baltazar and Lovi Poe. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:50

