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Movie Review: The Heartbreak Club (Sobat Ambyar)


Michael's Movie Grade: B A delightful and charming comedy-drama from Indonesia. While this movie is not extremely original and often falls into the realm of cliché, it tells its story earnestly and with such a good heart that I simply couldn't resist it. Despite being about heartaches and broken relationships, there is not an ounce of cynicism in this movie and during such a cynical time as this, the movie becomes all the more refreshing because of that. The characters are absolutely delightful. Though the story itself falls into clichés these characters never for a second feel like anything less than real. Their personalities are not the simple one note personalities they could have been. Much of this is due not only to a well crafted script (by Bagus Bramanti (who also co-directed) and Gea Rexy) but also due to a cast (lead by Bhisma Mulia (in his movie debut), Denira Wiraguna, Sisca JKT48 (in her movie debut) and Erick Estrada), whose performances are just as heartfelt and earnest as the script. Since the characters feel real the emotional moments in the story are quite effective. The film is also helped by some really funny humor. I admit to not excepting to laugh out loud watching this movie, but I did quite a few times. There are also along with the funny scenes plenty of scenes that are just flat out charming, in a way that never feels forced or consciously cute. If you would like to see this charming movie, it was released to Netflix just today. -Michael J. Ruhland

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