This commentary about the Marian Rivera and Dingdong Dantes starrer, “Marimar”, has been emailed to me. Here is his piece:

The Pinoy remake of the Mexican telenovela “Mari Mar” is nearing its conclusion this month on TV and it’s been a very disappointing ride in asfar as being a televiewer is concerned. The story is so bad that it failed to meet the standards of the original. And come to think of it, two directors have been assigned to work on it. Considering that the soap opera is for the “masa,” they did not have to dumb it down. The imported original must have costed less to air on Philippine television but the storywas really good and everyone bought it and loved it to the point that Thalia became ahousehold name and even anidol here because of it.

This Pinoy remake has all the elements that the original was praised for, for not having! And as it will soon end, it can be said that it’s a bad version of the original. To the point that can deter one from skipping episodes and watching something else better on TV.

It’s just sad and ironic that this has been pretty newcomer - Marian Rivera’s springboard vehicle to stardom and the directors and writers seem to be complacent and underestimating of the IQs of the televiewers. Being a popular show and high with the ratings, they do not seem to be interested to aim for any awards for their work. And being an irritated televiewer, one may think if the writers and directors are underpaid that is why the story is bad. It’s like High School students were tasked to write the story. And its just right that the Manila Bulletin’s Juicy Corner has already criticized this show that its writers seem to have ran out of creative juices and the following Koreanovela “Coffee Prince” even has a better story!

These same people of “Mari Mar,” will be almost the same exact team which will be responsible for the next show to be made for the Kapuso network that is the “Dyesebel” TV series. Let’s just hope that it will be better than this and that it’s even going to be better than the Charlene Gonzalez movie version that seems to have inspired them. That movie was just okay. But the musical score was undeniably terrible!