In his mission to film a narrative for every special-interest demographic in the gay dating wilderness, Crisaldo Pablo (with co-directors Remz Mallari, Jonathan Batoy, and Bob Galura) turns his lo-fi sexicomic filmmaking to an overweight twenty-something desperate to score. (The title is misleading; our hero is the chub, not the chaser.) Thanks largely to actor Joseff Young's valiant self-deprecation, Chubi's embarassing exploits -- he endures rejections, then cons other guys just so he can get laid -- don't come off as too pitiful; instead they're suggested to be a kind of spiritual quest for salvaging dignity. The jokes can be repetitive -- How many times do we need to be reminded that fat people are not high up on the sex food chain? -- but they're also designed to touch compassionately on everyone's anxieties on body image. |
