The adventures of a travelling cinema troupe owned by a pharmaceutical company in the early 1970s Thailand. They show only movies by a beloved Thai star, which they have to dub because talking movies were still not an accessible technology at the time. An older man is the driver, the chief is the male dubber, there is a young guy in charge of the film rolls who has an eye for the ladies and a new addition, a young woman dubber from a rival company who has been betrayed by her lover and is aiming to get enough money for a typist course in a major town.
Their core audience is made up of monks and older uneducated people in rural communities and their only bread and butter is the sale of variations of snake oil. They have a target, but they're not making it. Their rivals have better technologies, marketing and more fancy dubbers.
So the story is their attempts to survive on what could very well be their last tour before disbandment, the social landscape of the country, a love story and rivalry for the woman which felt very off and actually threatened to annihilate the whole endeavour and ultimately the cultural icon that was Mitr Chaibancha and the impact he had on these people who saw him so often in these movies. Apparently he did scores of them each year.
The movie has its shining moments, but it felt long and draggy and a bit all over the place. A better edited version could have had a bigger impact I feel. I also think there is a cultural factor that I'm missing out on entirely. It is probably very relevant to the Thai people, at least I hope it is. I can see the movie's heart is in the right place, it just didn't work as well for me, I forced myself through it a couple of times, especially in the beginning. The last part is captivating though.
