When freshmen Yi-shaun moves into her college dorm, her new roommates prove a challenge for the young bookworm: Jessica, who lives a sexually adventurous and liberated life and Li-Chi, a religion student trying to use black magic to find her true love. When the three accidentally summon a ghost, the odd group is forced to lean on each other’s strengths to find some semblance of normalcy and make it through dorm life.
“Girl Dorm’s Secrets” is a sexually charged comedy, which is chalked full of charm, but trips up a bit on the delivery. Perhaps, the most endearing aspect of the production comes from the actors, who each play wonderfully into the stereotypes they were given. The robotic and cold logic of Yi-shaun is particularly humorous when matched up against the easy going and sexually charged Jessica. The basis of their interactions creates the most comedic flair and each girl embodies her role with great comedic timing. In comparison, the resident ghost and the magic obsessed Li-chi are a bit more tame, but they shine when acting as a liaison between Yi-shaun and Jessica’s conflicts in personality.
The scripting and direction of best utilizing the dialogue exist as another notable strength. The wit is sharp and fast in delivery and the cast handles each line with great comedic timing to help punctuate the right moments. Overall, there are a lot of great gags and dialogue that becomes memorable, mostly through delivery.
Unfortunately, the production begins to drown in an over excess of ideas, or rather, the same ideas repeated ad nauseum. Even on the back of the previously mentioned strong performances and great script execution, tedium begins to set in pretty quickly. The film’s strengths save the production from completely drowning in the same joke told several times over, and audiences will still find some humour in later scenarios in the film. However, the repetitive nature of the delivery of jokes all focused around sex really limits the overall production. The feeling of overdoing things is not helped by the aesthetics either, which take a commercial pop vibe in colour and sound, as well as by the frenetic scene transitions, since, with the backdrop of one location the fast paced, bright style turns mundane. Ultimately, what could have been a strong comedy falls short due to lack of diversity in content.
“Girl Dorm’s Secrets” is rather one note, with three exaggerated characters clashing on issues of sexuality making up almost all of the humour. However, that is not to say that there are not some great comedic moments throughout, or that the actors suffer in the one note personas. The result made for a rather mixed affair for myself; I fell pretty hard for the performers’ charms and appreciated some of the script work. However, it was just a bit too much of a good thing, and jokes became predictable and dull pretty fast.
With the humour staying heavily focused on sex, and although I enjoyed the female perspective on certain issues (I now know more about menstrual cups than ever before), any comedy that relies on one subject as the butt of its humour is going to see diminishing return on each joke. Essentially, the twentieth joke about using a sex toy becomes more eye rolling than funny, regardless of how the production attempts to restructure the delivery. There is a lot to love about “Girl Dorm’s Secrets”, but the execution makes it seem unlikely that many will be able and willing to embrace this offbeat comedy.
