Review: University of Malaya Mock Trial 2012, “GAMPANG”

Before I begin this review, allow me to do 2 things. Firstly, let me acquaint you with myself. To those unfamiliar with me, I am a very brash person who is aggressively opinionated and a connoisseur of truth. I agree, to a certain degree, my truthfulness can come to a point of insult, but hey, if I don’t do it, who else will? We now live in a world filled with hypocrites who just say things to make you happy. Where do you go if you do not have someone to just push you down, bash you up and break your teeth in so that the next time you would come up fighting? With that said, I sincerely urge anyone who cannot take insults not to read this review, be it the cast, crew or any of the fine students of the UM Law School. Fair warning, it will not all be fine and dandy. I will give credits to where credits are due, and insults to where it is appropriate.

Secondly, to those who do not know what a Mock Trial is, it is essentially an act of sorts taking real-life cases, and making a parody of them. It is reputed to be extremely funny and in the University of Malaya, exclusively performed by, conducted and managed by students of the Faculty of Law, University of Malaya. Everything concerned with the production is student oriented from the writing of the script, the directing of the production and the performance itself, are all student-driven.

Let’s start.

Yesterday marks my second time as a Mock Trial audience; my first being the 2011 Mock Trial “Seksaan Syaitan”.

UM Mock Trial 2011
Seksaan Syaitan
Google Images 

The Mock Trial was titled "GAMPANG".

UM Mock Trial 2012
Gampang
Google Images

The good.

Their videos were awesome!

The introductory videos were excellently shot and had such realism to it that we, the audience were pretty much immersed in the excitement. But then again, Mock Trial does have the experience in stimulating the audiences from the get go, so it was good to see that they have put that knowledge to expert application. Kudos also to whoever it was that managed to snag the PDRM’s support in making this video. The cameo of the genuine Malaysian Royal Police force issued Proton Waja was a surprise and awed many of us. It looked like it was a real bust.

Royal Malaysian Police
standard issue
Proton Waja
Google Images

Next came the reporting bit, where a female reporter stands in front of the Law faculty and reports the arrest of a suspect in an ongoing murder case. This, I will have to say, was the only bane in the videos of the Mock Trial. The female reporter’s face was not focused on clearly and was blurred, so it was a little distracting. It slightly detracted from the viewing experience.

I will have to commend whoever came up with the credits video as well. It was a very creative twist to a very mundane bit of every production. My eyes were glued to the screen the whole time the video was rolling.  I think the only time I was so interested in a credits roll was when I finished the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game as well as all the Marvel movies which had a post-credits section after the roll.

The make-up and attires of the cast was also well thought of. I especially liked the terrorist dude’s multi-purpose beard cum pubic hair. Oh that cracked me up real good. The French-Mario dude’s moustache cum eyebrows was funny too!

We finally arrive at the act in itself. The act began with a very funny rendition of the Hari Raya song. Hats off to the Director for this bit, keeping the spirit of Raya going strong and making a reference to it. A bit of a personal touch and flair.

And that’s when it all came crashing to a disappointing plateau.  Let’s get to the bad parts of it now. The characters were not as well portrayed as last year, that bit was clear from the get-go, but by god did it bore the hell out of me. This year’s judge was some sort of a gay Qumar wananabe. I’m not sorry for saying this, but to the best of my knowledge, every production aims to immerse the audience in the storyline and make them as interested as possible without breaking the illusion that what they were seeing are all fake and is just a story after all. Now, I’ll proudly stand by last year’s Mock team. They managed that. It was a discernible production, one where it brought the audience along on a ride.

The problem with this year’s Mock was that the judge kept making references to the Busana team, and/or the Technical team. It shatters the whole illusion of the story. There were also too much gay jokes; jokes that were lame in retrospect and are just so reused and rehashed from Qumar’s act. Sir, I came to see the Kings of Varsity comedy at their best! If I wanted a plagiarized act of another comedian, I might as well have logged onto YouTube.  “Kings of Varsity Comedy” my sweet Malay butt.

Google Image search of
"Sweet malay butt" turned up disturbing results.
So here's a potato.
Google Image

Secondly, there were a lot of inside jokes, jokes that only apply to the men, women, and sexually confused beings of the UM Law School. I understand you have your seniors in there. The who’s who of UM Law School were all there, and you want to get your friends involved in it, sure. I can understand that, but there is one fundamental concept that you are getting wrong. You publicize the event to every corner of the globe and yet, the jokes are only relevant to those who are in the faculty. The cast has failed to take into account that there are also people who are not in the faculty who cannot understand some of the references made in the act. Hey, we paid our RM 3 as well okay. If the intention was only to appeal to the humor of the Law students, you might as well have not invited the rest of us there. Here we are, hearing all of these people laughing all around us, and we are sitting there feeling like the kid who has tissue paper hanging out of their butt; everyone knows something you don’t. Dude, I’m in the best university in Malaysia. I already feel inferior in knowledge every day as compared to my classmates and here I am, paying to feel the same in a play that’s promised to cheer me up? Ugh.

Thirdly, the witnesses brought to the stands. By god, the majority of them were just a bore. It was lame jokes after lame jokes. The kind of jokes pulled off by the likes of Harith Iskandar and Afdlin Shauqi; people who are so full of themselves that they think they were funny and in turn, overdid everything they do. The policeman cum magician cum creepy gay Dracula, the shaman cum bitchwitch and I’m especially looking at you Tan Sri Boring. The cast of Mock Trial are a long way from the humor prowess the likes of Russell Peters, Dane Cook, Dat Phan, hell, even Qumar.

Their only saving grace from the stream of witnesses cross-examined was this one Arabic-Bangladesh terrorist dude who was the third or so witness. DIRECTOR OF MOCK TRIAL 2013, LISTEN UP. IF YOU DON’T CAST THAT DUDE AGAIN NEXT YEAR, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE MISSING! I laughed and laughed throughout his whole slot, it was just the saving grace of the whole play. He was so in character and just so cool in the way he throws off his one liners that it was just so perfect. Other casts of the play would do well to follow his lead the next time around.

This DUDE!
Google Images

The nurse was not too bad as well. She managed to make me crack up a few times with her pronunciations as well as her general act. I would say that the nurse pulled off her role. The two of them; the terrorist dude and the nurse were just the ones worth paying attention to I’d say.

I shall proceed to the counsels. There were six in all; there’s this Datin like counsel, a French Mario look-alike, a tomboy, an Indonesian (by the way he speaks), a parody of Pandalela Rinong  called Pandagila, and an old school Malaysian Deejay. All in all, they were pretty harmless. I would say they adequately played their role. But my favourite is the French Mario. Holy hell did he manage to nail that French accent! I loved every bit of his cross-examination! Kudos mate. =) On the off side, the Datin is just so bloody annoying. I would suggest a killing off of her/his (revealed to be a man sometime throughout the show) character the next time round. His/her (its?) voice was like a bird’s cry when it has a cat biting its neck trying to kill it! I honestly thought that her heft (he/she was a big f*cker) was just creating its own gravity to a point where the time-space continuum just gives up and goes home thus leading to my watch’s second finger refusing to budge.

The rest was not so bad, though I do feel that the inclusion of an old school Malay deejay was a very good idea! Pity it wasn’t milked for all it was worth. They had the potential when they played the music as a background and dimmed it everytime the deejay spoke and played it back up again after he was silent. If only they had kept that up throughout his whole cross-examination, that would have been a lot better in my opinion. I'm sorry to say that the rest of the counsels were pretty much forgettable.

In closing, I would like to say that the Mock Trial 2012 were not without its crazy awesome moments. The scene where the judge was trying to mock Pandagila and ends up breaking his chair was just epic! His reaction and fear was so real to a point where it was so clear that it’s off script. Instead of covering it up, he openly showed his fear and concern and as an audience, I think he made the right call. Its was just so damn funny at the time. It was made better that when the technical crew came in to replace the chair and brought out the broken one, we got a glimpse of the broken chair. IT WAS DESTROYED! The audience went nuts!

Another memorable flop was when the policewoman that was supposed to maintain order in the courtroom was calling for all the people involved to rise and when she kicked the stairs, it ricocheted resulting in an EPIC FALL! The shock on her face was so real that we seriously were taken by surprise. And the fact that the pain was etched so clearly in her face was just the boost we need to keep laughing at her. Yeah, it was bad to laugh at people that fell flat on their asses, but hey, humans are fucked up. =)

I guess it’s all these little bits of spontaneity that saved the show for me. Overall, I didn’t really enjoy the mock in itself, I would say that the cast has much to improve performance-wise to make it a really high-standard show, to make them really earn the title “KINGS of Varsity comedy”. But all in all, for 3 ringgit, who am I to complain right?

To the cast, considering what you have been through to make this play, and how hard it is to perform on a stage, you have my support for future mocks. My best go to you. 

6 out of 10.

Addendum: For future mocks, I would recommend the Technical crew to utilize a different Media Player for the video. Windows Media Player has some stability issues which would be okay for personal use, but when there's a need for it to perform flawlessly, it sometimes takes up more RAM than usual and causes jumps or lags in the video. I would strongly suggest using a lighter Media Player, something like VLC next time.