Written By: Michelle Ahn
This article may contain spoilers.
Lumpias, the beloved Filipino spring rolls, are so good they can be addicting. In “Lumpia With a Vengeance” they literally are and more.
Patricio Ginelsa’s “Lumpia With a Vengeance” is the sequel to the cult favorite homemade superhero film, “Lumpia.” The sequel follows Rachel (April Absynth) as she teams up with the crime-fighting Kuya or “Lumpia Man” (Mark Muñoz) and sidekick George or “G-Dog” (Earl Baylon) to stop a crime syndicate that’s selling drugs disguised as lumpia at her school. At the same time, Rachel is preparing her parents’ long overdue wedding, which she’ll be the maid of honor in.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the original, Ginelsa and his team launched a crowdfund in 2013 and finally went into production in 2017. It’s been a long time in the making, but Ginelsa knew he wanted to get it right. “We didn’t want to just make a half-ass movie. We wanted a movie that was reflective of all of the support that we got — that was worthy of the support that we got from our backers,” he told me over a phone interview.
The first “Lumpia” came out in 2003: five whole years before the Marvel Cinematic Universe filled our screens and made superhero movies the norm. With “Lumpia With a Vengeance,” Ginelsa had more references to pull from. He told me, “To be honest, the style of editing … that we established with this new one was really everything that I wanted to do [that] the original couldn’t because it was homemade, it was Video8, and we didn’t have those resources.”
While the comic book tropes and effects may have started out in the original as a mask to cover up the flaws in creating a homemade movie, they truly shine in the sequel. It does take a few minutes for the viewer to adjust to, but after the first couple of scenes, these effects are the heart of the “Lumpia franchise.” At times it’s wacky and at other times borderline corny. Nevertheless, it’s pure entertainment and the viewer will find themselves immersed and truly believing a lumpia can be a deadly weapon. “It was controlled in a way that worked, so that it was never so distracting that it didn’t move the story forward,” Ginelsa noted.
If the effects are the heart of the franchise, the first installment’s main characters create the soul. “Lumpia” featured Ginelsa’s childhood neighbors, who reprise their roles in “Lumpia With a Vengeance”: Francis Custodio as Mon Mon (Rachel’s dad in the sequel) and Edward Baon as Tyrone. There’s a few more familiar faces, including an easter egg for devout fans.
Writing and developing the sequel took longer than expected because Ginelsa and his team were filmmaking part-time in addition to their full-time careers. This included Francis Custodio, who currently is a partner at an accounting firm. “It was hard for me to convince him because he’s a family man now and he has kids and he wanted to be a part of it, but he couldn’t be a lead. And of course he was scared because of the fact he will be in a real movie. It’s not a homemade film anymore,” Ginelsa said.
While Custodio agreed to still partake, the sequel needed a new hero. After various drafts focusing on Mon Mon’s son named Ross as the protagonist, Ginelsa and his fellow writers decided to switch it up and make the lead a daughter, Rachel. Ginelsa admits to me he previously had trouble writing women characters, even considering it a “handicap.” But he challenged himself and with Rachel now as the protagonist, everything clicked. He elaborated, “Everything I felt was wrong with all the drafts of it as Mon Mon as lead or Ross as a lead, it all of a sudden, like it just opened the doors when the character became Rachel.”
With a script set, they were ready for production. With a higher budget and greater expectations, the creators of “Lumpia With a Vengeance” knew they needed professional talent to anchor the film. The first to join onboard was Mark Muñoz, who is a former UFC champion. After seeing Muñoz’s last fight in Manila, Ginelsa saw him give a speech about bullying and anti-bullying, a key theme in the original “Lumpia” film. The lightbulb went off. “I just connected him, like this is Kuya. This is that guy,” Ginelsa said. With their action lead secured, Ginelsa and his team were able to ensemble an impressive cast, including Danny Trejo of “Spy Kids” and “Breaking Bad” fame.
Aside from just their talents that give each character a unique life on screen, the cast’s greatest feat may be their success in working together on set. “The hardest part, you have to remember, this is a whole experiment, right? It was trying to combine a non-professional, amateur actor with professionals,” Ginelsa said. “That was an experiment that I didn’t think would fly.”
However, there was still one diva on set: the lumpia. The lumpia thrown around in action sequences was actually either an eggroll-type prop or CGI lumpia, leading to no waste on set. But the edible lumpia, which features heavily whenever Kuya activates his “powers,” had to be perfectly cooked to get its signature on-screen crunch. This caused a couple of headaches. “The one diva on set was always the lumpia because it was never ready when we wanted it,” Ginelsa joked. “If you have lumpia waiting, it’s not crispy anymore, it’s soggy. So it was either that, or we had to cook it right away, but we’d have to wait for it because it’s still in the deep fryer.”
With the title, many may expect lumpia to be the star of the film and rightful diva. However, the true star is the community. This film would not have been possible without the support of fellow Filipinos who wanted to see themselves in a fun and quirky way. Ginelsa only hopes the result is rewarding: “I think my goal really was … just to portray us Filipinos as just like anyone else. Like we can be superheroes, we can be supervillains. And we can be politicians. I think that’s so empowering.”
“Lumpia With a Vengeance” makes its New York City premiere at the 44th Asian American International Film Festival. Ticket and screening information can be found here and here.
Each ticket includes a free digital copy of “Lumpia With a Vengeance: Prelude #1,” the comic book with a special New York Premiere/AAIFF wraparound variant cover by artist/ film producer Lawrence Iriarte. You can also purchase the comic book separately online.