My Illegal Wife | Movie Review

About My Illegal Wife

My Illegal Wife is a 2014 Filipino comedy spoof film directed by Tony Y. Reyes starring Pokwang and Zanjoe Marudo. The film, produced by Skylight Films and distributed by Star Cinema officially premiered in the Philippines on June 11, 2014.


Parodies

There are numerous television and movies that the film used to spoof. In fact, their title is a spoof of ABS-CBN's The Legal Wife primetime series.Note that only the title is spoofed, not the storyline.
Other parodies include:

numerous scenes in Got to Believe series.

Kim Chiu's line: "Isn't it amazing, isn't it surprising" from Bride for Rent.

Bea Alonzo's rain scene in She's the One.

Sarah Geronimo in It Takes a Man and a Woman.

Piolo Pascual and Toni Gonzaga's confrontation scene in Starting Over Again.

Janet Lim Napoles as the head of Philippine-based Yakuza searching for 3 gold plates inserted in Henry's abdomen.

Maja Salvador and Angel Locsin's slap scene "Walang Sa'yo Nicole! Akin Lang ang ASAWA KO!"

Movie Review

MY ILLEGAL WIFE (Tony Reyes, 2014) – The funny spoofs would have worked better in a 30-minute Banana Split episode.

My notes on My Illegal Wife:

1. This was another case of the trailer containing all the good jokes that left the actual movie desperately trying to elicit laughs for two hours.

2. Is Pokwang required to do splits in all of her movies? I know that image is like an instant source of laughter (and a showcase of her flexibility) but maybe she needs to give her vajayjay some much needed rest. Besides, hasn’t this stunt been copyrighted by Mystica? It’s a shame because Pokwang’s a really good comedienne and given the right material, I’m sure she can do much more than wear sexy lingerie and do bedroom somersaults multiple times.

3. All of the Star Cinema rom-com spoofs were dead-on. The movie blatantly pointed out how lame/cheesy/crazy those scenes were and it surprised me a lot since this was funded by Star Cinema. Genius!

4. One of my favorite movies is Maria Full of Grace starring Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno (download it now). It’s about a pregnant girl that was used as a drug mule (because of her condition, she wouldn’t be asked to go through the x-ray so the countless packets of heroin that she swallowed won’t be detected). Good stuff! I was reminded of this movie because Zanjoe Marudo’s character was also used as a mule (gold coins were planted in his belly) and I kept thinking if that at all was even possible.

5. Zanjoe does a mean (and by mean, I mean really hilarious) impression of Xian Lim. I hope that will serve as the latter’s wake-up call to the school of acting.

6. Joy Viado and Pooh provided some much-needed laughs in between not-so-funny punchlines and slapstick straight out of old Tito, Vic, and Joey movies. Why is comedy in our country regressing?

Movie Rate : ★★☆☆☆

Thanks to Json Javier for the wonderful movie review of My Illegal Wife.

Json Javier is working in a BPO industry and also a movie reviewer, he graduate in Ateneo de Manila University.