Cool Gel Attacks (กระดึ๊บ, 2011)

A couple of years ago weird, gel-like objects started to fall over Thailand (and they have been seen all over the world) and caused a sensation. Cool Gel Attacks also begins with real headlines and TV-reports about these mysterious events and leads us to two neighbouring entrepreneurs in the Thai countryside. One manufacturers ice and the other one has a bakery. They hate each other and things get worse when their teenage kids falls in love with each other! One night more gel falls down in the area and soon an invasion of small, jelly, worm-like creatures spread like the plague and the only way to stop them is if the two men can be friends and work together with their families and employees!

Cool Gel Attacks is actually a very charming comedy with a thin storyline and a lot of sex-related jokes. Most of the jokes keep themselves way below the belt and works better than some of the American counterparts with the same kind of comedy. Of course the budget is much lower here and the effects goes from quite good to SyFy Channel quality. The movie doesn't take itself especially seriously and it's easy to buy the cheap effects when the pacing is high and the actors has the kind of charisma they have.

Like most Thai comedies made for a wider audience the acting is "colourful" and relies on funny voices, weird faces and lots and lots of slapstick. And funny sound effects. Now, I'm not a stranger to that kind of comedy - watch a normal pseudo-serious Bollywood movie and you'll hear "funny" sound effects when something "funny" is happening, but in this movie it's all the time. It's like watching a circus show with clown making sound effects to everything that happens. I'm not saying it's wrong, but I'm also saying that this is probably the most exotic thing with Cool Gel Attacks.

I'm not so sure this movie will do well in the rest of the world, but the 80 minutes it lasts is fun and not boring, but hardly perfect. And do I need to tell you that it's not out with English subs anyway?

Anyway....

Recently I visited Thailand and also had the pleasure to go to The Thai Film Archive. Great place, and to my surprise they had something that probably was used - but I didn't see it - in Cool Gel Attacks or maybe in the promotion around it. It was cool anyway and I had to immortalize myself with it!