A perfume salesclerk wants the romcom life, she wants it so badly, she’s ready to hop from her boyfriend to a new, more aligned with that dream, businessman prospect.
Based on a story by Avid Liongoren and Manny Angeles, with a script by Manny Angeles and Paulle Olivenza, and directed by Avid Liongoren, Hayop Ka! is an animation film for grown-ups (subject-wise but also because it includes a sex scene), one that is entertaining and fun to watch but also one that suffers a bit from using too many cliches from the romcom world and some shaming of women in ways that while meant to be comedic and remedied later (mostly) make it feel like it is a lot older than 6 years old (2020 was not thaaat long ago culturally). This leads to a film that is decently written and well directed but with some story issues that are annoying.
The animation here is a main component and it is pretty, cute, and dynamic with a few scenes purposefully done in different styles that work quite well within the story. The look of it all is charming and pulls the viewer in.
Now, working with this script, direction, and animation is the voice cast. For this review the film was watched in its original Filipino language with English subtitles with some lines throughout the film in English as the character see using English as cool and worldly. The cast of voice actors is led by Angelica Panganiban as Nimfa, our leading cat lady, does fantastic work. Joining her in the fantastic performance club is Sam Milby as Iñigo Villanueva in a different way. The rest of the cast works great too, but the one above and beyond is Empoy Marquez as Jerry, minimal presence, maximum impact of adorable, sweet, non-problematic.
And that’s the thing, no matter how cute and adorable and funny the film is, it is problematic in that not a single female character is presented as a good person. We have the lead who can’t seem to have enough of anything, always looking for something better, the best friend who plays behind her back, the teen mother (who they make sure to strongly judge), the bimbo, etc. The female characters are not only cliche, they are negatively so. The male characters do not fair much better, between the violent boyfriend and the philandering love interest, the viewers are lucky to have the frog doorman/valet and the cook. The characters here do not have many redeeming qualities, and it makes it difficult to care about them by the time the film ends.
Fantasia 2026 runs from July 16th to August 2nd, 2026