I can't believe my aunts' rivalry with each other is jeopardizing us getting away with murder.
Dial A for Aunties
by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Genre: Romantic Comedy
About: Meddy is the good girl of the family, the one who never left home. Even after college and losing her first love she dutifully begins work as the photographer for her mother and aunties wedding business. But when her loving, meddling family decide to set Meddy up on a blind date, it ends with her date in the trunk of her car and disposing of the body means inviting the corpse to the big wedding they've been hired to do the next day...
The Good
The mum and aunties are all equally hilarious. I loved the bickering between them and the jump from scolding to praising Meddy for the most ridiculous things (fruit must be served in the middle of the night before discussing how to get rid of a body, very rude otherwise, or Meddy very respectful to cover dead man's face, proves she's been raised well). The dynamic between the women of the family is just so endearing. The story as a whole is well written and fun to read but it's those aunties and fussing mother that really sold the story for me. The situation might be crazy at times, but I believed they were a real family.
The Bad
The comedy does get a bit over-emphasised at times. The parts I found genuinely funny were the miscommunication in the different languages and the rivalry of the aunts. The actual situations the characters were put in were too over the top for me to find all that funny - and Meddy's freak out narration of what was going on stretched out those ridiculous moments for a laugh that I just didn't feel. I think this actually has the potential to be a better movie than book because although it's well written, the jokes would probably land better for me visually so the fact that this is going to be a Netflix movie is something I'm looking forward to seeing, especially if they get the casting right as there are some great characters here.
The Somewhat Iffy
Meddy and Nathan are a cute couple but I did roll my eyes a little at how Nathan is described as though the moment he sees Meddy he's ready to pick up from where they left off FOUR years ago. Neither of them moved on, fine, but relationships don't just click back into place. The same goes for the resolution - everything works out just so for all parties. It's all very cosy, there's no real bad guy, no real consequences and everyone ends up happy (except the dead guy, things went pretty shitty for him).
Overall
There's real heart to this story. It's a crazy story, but the characters do have real moments in between the crazy which I really liked. Looking forward to the Netflix adaptation - they can change whatever they want about the plot, but I want those aunties perfect!
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