Wayang Boy
Raymond Tan
The story: Raja (Denzyl Dharma) comes to Singapore from India and has difficulty adjusting to life here. At school, egged on by fellow student Shi Han (Tan Wei Tian), he gets into a fight with Xavier (Loh Ren Jie). All three end up getting roped into the Chinese Opera club by Mr Koay (Law Kar Ying). Raja also misses his father and lashes out at his stepmother (Chantel Liu).

This is the hook: An Indian boy sings Chinese opera. And that, as the school principal in the film crassly puts it, is akin to the spectacle of a fish walking on land.
The question is, how do you make an entire film out of it?
Director Raymond Tan builds upon his own short film Wa Is For Wayang (2011) and ends up surrounding the fish-out-of-water with all manner of unnecessary sideshows, such as a drawn-out endurance competition to win a car.
Hong Kong actress Michelle Yim’s turn as the principal’s secretary is also pointless, beyond the veteran star lending some big-name glamour to the production.
An extensive plug for a security company and the career opportunities it offers is so intrusive as a product placement that Jack Neo would be proud.
The central story has some promise, but even in multicultural Singapore, this is not quite run-of-the-mill.
Yet there are no explanations given for these somewhat unusual situations and we are simply expected to accept them as given.
Given that the movie is titled Wayang Boy, it is also reasonable for viewers to expect to see a fair bit about Raja learning Chinese opera. Unfortunately, aside from the final performance, Chinese opera does not get much of an airing.
Instead, the film gets bogged down with Tan framing the subject matter as one of foreigners versus Singaporeans and then piling on more of such examples. Henry (Chen Tianwen), for example, keeps getting passed over for promotion as foreigners get parachuted in. He is also not happy that his son has a smaller role in the opera skit compared to Raja, a foreigner.
There is nothing new here that is not already heard in the media and on social media.
It also does not help that everyone is a shrill variation of the ugly Singaporean, even though Denzyl is watchable as the Mandarin-speaking boy struggling to cope in a new environment after leaving India, both at school and at home; and Liu is sympathetic as the stepmother.
To its credit, the film tries to dismantle some stereotypes, such as having a Caucasian executive (played by Bobby Tonelli) speak Mandarin rather than appear completely clueless. But it inexplicably feeds into others, such as having Indian workers dance whenever they hear music. What would Raja have made of that?
(ST)