crazy little thing called love

One of the worst things you can do is to make your eye candy in school your friend.

One horrible outcome, of course, is his outright indifference.

But worse, he might actually like you. And you start worrying about how much s/he likes you. Whether its ‘like’ or ‘like’. Whether he says ‘hi’ to you because he is a being friendly and you are nice enough or because he finds you attractive. Whether he noticed you are trying to make yourself more attractive. Whether he looks forward to 5 minute conversations between classes as much as you do. Whether he would eventually want to stretch those 5 minute conversations into real time together. You start checking whether his feet points towards you when you talk to each other and whether his pupils dilate when he sees you.

Perhaps, when you start getting to know him a little better – when you are between friend and acquaintance – you start noticing when he is sad or out-of-sorts, and you feel bad that you have no right to do anything about it.

And then that eye candy – who had given your imagination so much joy – he doesn’t make you happy anymore. Or as Nam puts it, your happiness will always have an underlying pain.

Title: Crazy Little Called Love

Country/Genre: Thailand/Rom Com

Synopsis: Nam is a plain, dark-ish girl who has a crush on Shone, the school star soccer player since forever. Despite her best efforts and a book called ‘9 methods to make him like you’ that she and her friends swear by, he seems to have to put her in the friend zone. Then out of the blue, Shone’s best friends expresses an interest in her..

(they are the same person, by the way)

This movie is at  its best at the beginning. As Nam, with  her friends’ help, do everything infatuated people do – calling him and then putting down the phone, giving little gifts, keeping everything that he ever touched, getting upset with the resident school catty dancer who tries underhanded ways of getting him too – you can’t help agreeing with the movie’s tagline “this is the true story of everyone.” Of course, Shone as a character, gets short shrift in this part of the movie – he is nice enough, but would anyone like him so much if he wasn’t so darned good looking? Probably not.

The problem is, Nam’s character grew, it becomes harder and harder to believe – as the movie would like as to – that this is true love, not just a crush. Shone and Nam never really get much screen time together; except for one cute moment when he puts her off eating squids; so, you never get a sense of what they would be like as a real couple.

The fairy tale ending becomes a let-down, you root for them because you  project yourself onto Nam (and all your past crushes onto Shone). You don’t root for them for the kind of relationship they have, because they kind of don’t have any.

Then again, maybe projecting on a pretty blank canvas is the true story of everyone too.