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For over a decade, Padung Kraisri has charmed and entertained comic book readers with Noo Hin, a domestic helper from Thailand ’s rural countryside whose well-intentioned but silly
actions always seem to end up in disastrous results. When Sahamongkol Film announced its plan to adapt this popular cartoon character into a live action film, expectations predictably soared and, after director Komkrit Trivimol took on the project, scaled a new height because his two previous works My Girl (2003) and Dear Dakanda (2005) had been both critical favorites and box office smash hits. Unfortunately for the audience with high hopes, Noo Hin: The Movie fails to amount to anything but a fragmented assembly of dry jokes and pointless stories.
Noo Hin: The Movie opens with the title character (played by Runglawan Tonahongsa as one of the movie’s few highlights) deciding to leave her poor rural village and come to Bangkok to earn a living as a factory worker. In a twist of fate, the labor agency places her as a maid for a rich family with two beautiful daughters, who win a contract with a famous designer from a modeling contest in which Noo Hin has secretly sent their names. Another model, however, wants this contract enough to plan a kidnapping of these two beauty queens and Noo Hin must put herself in the line of fire to save her masters.
In the beginning, Noo Hin sharply observes the Bangkokians’ eccentric behaviors (such as the urbanites’ voracious fight for sale items and her master’s obsession for outer beauty) but this excellent point loses focus as the story progresses. It ventures into a patriotic call for loving one’s homeland toward the end. And, Noo Hin’s kidnapping is just too long and lacks any reason.
The plot is also peppered with jokes but most of them turn out flat and outdated. The buffalo ride gone awry is remotely amusing, and Noo Hin’s misuse of a mosquito repellant and inability to operate modern technology command only a chuckle. Jokes about effeminate gays are quite degrading, and I keep wondering what is funny about equipping oneself in kitchenware?
Actually, dressing up in kitchenware is a testament to Runglawan’s dramatic flair, as she is perhaps the only joy of the movie. I am certainly not the first to say it, but I will say it again: Runglawan is born for the role of Noo Hin. She looks uncannily like the cartoon character and she is wildly funny and pleasantly overdramatic.
Komkrit holds back his talent with just an average directing style. I wish he would create more scenes like Noo Hin’s daydream sequence in the beginning of the movie in which she fantasizes about working in Bangkok and breaks out into a stage-show song-and-dance number, not much different from Rob Marshall’s Chicago . Personally, I regard this as the best scene in the movie and, if employed throughout the plot, Noo Hin: The Movie may actually be one of this year’s most original and entertaining films.
Instead, it barely leaves an impression on the viewers and fails to captivate Thailand the way Padung’s Noo Hin and Komkrit’s other works have.
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