Darna: Ang pagbabalik (1994)

[Xenorama]

Anjanette Abayari ... Darna / Narda
Edu Manzano ... Dominico Lipolico
Rustom Padilla
Pilita Corrales ... Valentina
Bong Alvarez
Perla Bautista
Ai-Ai de las Alas
Cherie Gil ... Valentine
Lester Llansang ... Ding

Darna is the Philipino Wonder Woman. so much so that she even plays
"bullets and bracelets" in this movie! created by Mars Ravelo in the
50s, she's been in many other movies, as well as comics and such.

this involves her stopping her long time foe Valentina from taking
over the Philipines via subliminal messages on tv. it meanders a bit
between this story and the local gangster "Magnum", to it's deterrent.

i saw this several years ago (thanks Chris) but since it was all in
Tagalog i couldn't follow it too well, and the excessive dialogue
didn't help. there's some English sprinkled throughout the movie, but
not enough to convey the plot properly. now that i have a subtitled
copy it's a lot easier to handle.

i really enjoy the effects for the most part. they don't really worry
about being convincing, but they at least have her do superheroic
things in the movie- catch people when they fall out of helicopters,
beat up the badguys, all the stuff that heroes should do. one of the
problems of the movie is, like a LOT of superhero movies, there's just
not enough of the heroics. Anjenette is a beautiful woman and being
in that costume MORE couldn't have been a bad thing.

the rest of the cast does a fine job, the kid playing her brother
"Ding" is a little too precocious, but not bad overall. it could use
about 10 minutes trimmed out of it and it would work a lot better.