AIYOH, WHAT A BAD DREAM

THEY say when a movie takes a long time (read two to three years) to complete, it's no longer fresh. This isn't always true. Surely, a brilliant story on the magic of Gamat Emas (golden sea cucumber) by first-rate director like Shuhaimi Baba is anything but stale.

Pesona Pictures Mimpi Moon have many good excuses for the delay: the main actors had to go through acting classes, image building, interpretation of characters etc, etc. The script was revised, reworked and rewritten several times.

And doing Mimpi Moon in two versions Bahasa and English-was time-consuming.

"It has the distinction of being the first local English Language film with the aim of being distributed internationally," says the publicity release.

But sitting through the preview proved to be an excruciating experience.

The movie opens with a distractingly Filem Negara-like narration of how the Gamat Emas is found in the sleepy town of Batu Suara in Langkawi. The story is about lovers Moon, a kampung boy (played by Rashidi Ishak), and Vina (Kavita Kaur). When Vina's mother dies in a tragedy in Cambodia, Vina leaves Moon for London.

Ten years later, Moon and Vina return to Batu Suara. Moon is now an album producer while Vina is a cosmetician. Meanwhile Moon's father, Dr Mansoor (Jalaluddin Hassan) and sister Dr Nona (Ning Baizura) are busy improvising their gamat concoction and conducting research work on it.

The love story and the Gamat ``docudrama`` is interwoven in a snail-like manner which gives one a feel of Once Upon A Time. The sequence is slow, jumpy, and lacking focus.

For the better part of two hours, Shuhaimi seems undecided whether to sell gamat or develop the love story of Vina and Moon.

Then there are scenes which are simply inconsequential Melissa Saila and Jit Murad barging into the studio while Moon is at work, for example, or the bunch of suspicious "Hi, Gang" strangers in town and Sarimah Ibrahim (of ntv7 RIM fame) butting in to collect her belongings at Moon's house. Casting wise, except for Afdlin Shauki and Ida Nerina, everyone seems miscast. Despite the combined talents of stars Jalaluddin Hassan, Afdlin Shauki and Ida Nerina, Mimpi Moon fails miserably. The fault lies surely not with them but in the direction.

The biggest disappointments are newcomers Rashidi and Kavita. Their Robocop-like portrayals made watching the movie boring. They play screen lovers but provide little chemistry and even less conviction.

Jalaluddin Hassan of TV fame should just stick to small screen acting. His northern dialect is a strain on the ears while his stereotyped acting just takes the cake.

Talented Ida Nerina, touted to be the actress who excels no matter what, is not so promising either. Ida overplays her Miranda role (a Spanish agent), going overboard with her sultry character, peppering frivolous Spanish all over poor us.

Ning is at ease in her role but looks out of place because everybody else looks so wrong. This leaves Afdlin Shauki, who played Siamese-Cambodian Sok Van, to steal every scene.

A cheap advertisement for gamat, this is what Mimpi Moon is. But really a National Geographic treatment of gamat would have been better. It's strange how Shuhaimi simply throws her ideas around in the movie. Only amateurs do this. It's difficult to believe that this is the work of Shuhaimi Baba, THE director who gave us Selubung, Ringgit Kasorgga, Layar Lara and the all-time favourite telemovie, Maria.

The simple truth is Mimpi Moon is a bad movie done by a good director. And that's really sad. Watching it was like a bad dream!

BY ZIEMAN - PUBLISHED 8/4/2000