Last Saturday I went to Alamanda Shopping Mall at Putrajaya for my weekly ritual Retail Therapy and R&R. Among other shops that I walked into was this local franchise Music & DVD Retail shop on the Lower Ground Floor. I buy Movie DVDs all the times and I just couldn’t resist to just ignore this shop whenever I see one.In just 30 minutes I already ended up with 4 DVDs in my hand; JAWS-Special Edition, Aquamarine, Coco Avant Chanel and Talentime. I have been meaning to buy Talentime for a long time because I didn’t get the chance to watch that movie in the cinema. The review about Talentime movie was very interesting and good. Arwah Yasmin Ahmad was well known for putting together interracial issues of Malaysia, the cultures and the religions in one movie. And I have seen her previous movies such as Sepet, Gubra, Mukhsin and Muallaf in the cinemas and own the DVDs as well. And so I was so excited to watch this movie in my living room.
Quarter ways down the movie, then I started to realized that I cannot understand a damn thing of what the Indian family in this movie was talking about. I started looking for the Subtitle button on my Pioneer remote control. I checked and checked many times in different ways if I have missed any button or anything that make the subtitle gone missing. Then I realized for real that this movie has no subtitle provided. And it’s a DVD for God sake!I kept thinking that it would be a real shame if this movie does not provide subtitles. Finally I read on the back cover of the DVD and it doesn’t say anywhere that this movie has subtitles. But it’s written there that the language was Bahasa Malaysia. Even this they cannot get it right! Through out the movie, 3 languages were spoken through; Bahasa Malaysia, English and Tamil. Not just Bahasa Malaysia language. WHY CAN’T THEY GET THIS RIGHT?
It’s a real shame to this movie! Rather than I get annoyed guessing what the Indian Family was chatting about through out the movie, I decided to press the STOP button on my remote control and replaced Talentime DVD with COCO Avant Chanel Movie.I was shocked and deeply disappointed with this unfortunate issue. Then again I told to myself, this is a very typical problem of Malaysian products in general. There’s always something stupid that would come out from it. It was half way done and I cannot believe that no one from the production of Talentime even care to put the subtitles. This is so sad!
Very little Malaysian speaks Tamil and to convey such beautiful message about how different cultures and religion in Malaysia lives through this movie without subtitles is one STUPID and LAZY move. I don’t think it was that hard to come out with the subtitles as the cinema version already had subtitles. Even the counterfeit DVDs that they sell at Pasar Malam have subtitles. Although most of the times it wasn’t a perfect translation but still they took all the effort to put subtitles anyway in those RM5 Hollywood Movies.
I was very disappointed with this “halfassed” production. Never again I buy a Malaysian Movie that is done to rip me off like this. It’s not about the money. Telentime DVD only cost me RM 19.90 and I buy DVDs that cost RM 59.90 all the times. But the one thing that I expect from a DVD is to have beautiful flawless pictures, a decent good sound, subtitles and maybe some bonus features. That’s all!
I mean, not only they didn’t put subtitles for us to understand the Tamil Language conversations, there were no special features what so ever on top of that. So why should I even bother to buy Malaysian Movie next time? This movie wasn’t that great, but I wanted to support Malaysian Products so every once and a while when I came across an OK Malay Movies, I buy them because I want them to grow and make money for their hard work and make a better productions next time.
But I guess, I better to just stick to Hollywood or foreign movies that has multi-language subtitles and even put a little extra bonus features in the DVD version.
So don’t come complain to me asking why I didn’t support Malay Movies. I did but I got disappointed for one too many!
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