"Colma" refers to a northern California town built as a necropolis and still used as a burial place. It serves as the setting for the picture, but the meaning is expanded to characterize the small town as a place of boredom and spiritual death for its young residents. The teenagers at the center of the movie are Rodel (H. P. Mendoza), Maribel (L. A. Renigen) and Billy (Jake Moreno). The three rebel against the status quo by periodically breaking into musical numbers--songs original to the film done in the style of 1980s new wave rock. They dance around the cemetery and streets. Just out of high school, they are just beginning to explore a new world of part-time mall jobs and college parties. As new revelations and romances challenge their relationships with one another and their parents, the trio must assess what to hold onto, and how to best follow their dreams.
The movie opens with the three leads singing the rave-up "Colma Stays", which describes the anonymous small town with clever imagery. Lanky Billy is an aspiring actor who gets a sales job at the mall and also a supporting role in a local community theater production. He also finds a new girlfriend Tara (Sigrid Sutton) but can never quite manage to shake off the lingering memories of his ex-girlfriend Joanne (Kat Kneisel), much to the chagrin of his close friend Maribel. With a cheerful spark masking an uncertain melancholy, cherubic party girl Maribel is the glue holding the trio together. Her main concerns are getting fake IDs and looking ''f**kable''. Maribel's shining moment comes with "Crash the Party", very similar to Blondie's "Dreamin'", preceded by the film's funniest moment, a purchase of alcohol with fake IDs similar to the liquor store scene in "Superbad".
Rodel is the most challenging character, a gay poet and slacker, closeted from his traditional Filipino father and increasingly jealous of Billy's ability to move on with his life. He feels that he has to be a good son (his brother is in prison) and that means he must stay in the closet. Rodel provides the film's most painfully realistic moments, as well as the most lacerating lines. His rendition of "One Day" provides genuine heart to the story's climactic moment, but his nasal vocals are a repetitive monotone. The barroom shanty scene runs too long, especially in ¾ time, and the "Deadwalking" duet between Maribel and Rodel is marred by the artsy intrusion of ghostly couples dancing in the cemetery.
Filled with shots of San Francisco in the background, those in the Bay Area will appreciate the SF inside jokes. The first half dozen songs cover everything from the boring life in Colma to crashing college parties. However, the second half of the film tackles more serious and mature themes such as love, family acceptance, and becoming an adult. The acting feels stilted and the music derivative, but the film somehow makes it to the finish line through its honesty about how life is for social outcasts living in San Francisco's suburban necropolis. This coming-of-age musical had a budget of $15,000, but first-time director Richard Wong and first-time screenwriter, songwriter and co-lead H. P. Mendoza make something substantive from the premise of three close friends just out of high school. It's a funny, bawdy, real, stylized, quirky world in a bizarre setting.
Director Wong said: "It's a hard movie to market. All the gay distributors don't think the film's gay enough, all the Asian distributors don't think it's Asian enough. People like labels, and labels help sell. We didn't make it to sell anyways. And just the fact that it is gonna sell is pretty amazing. We never even considered submitting to queer and Asian film fests. It was always more about teenagers and the human experience. I would never take away what they have done for us, but that was not our original aim. We just set out to make a good movie." The DVD includes a commentary track from Wong and Mendoza and fifteen minutes of deleted and extended scenes. H. P. Mendoza composed the original music. He also wrote the screenplay from a story he wrote with director Richard Wong.
