When Noah proposed to Mia, the happy occasion was marred by a freak accident. Emotionally wrecked, Mia gatecrashed a wedding party held on a beach in Palawan and made a big scene with her drunken speech. She almost drowned when she ran into the water but she was rescued by the best man, Jay.

Dr. Mia Salazar was an MD, a "doctor to the barrio" working at the local hospital. Dr. Jay Policarpio had PhD in forestry, and enjoyed spewing random facts and statistics about the environment. Despite the huge differences in personality, especially their drinking habits, the two hit it off quite well. However, Mia's past would always get in their way.

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This unconventional love story begins with a traumatic event which left our titular heroine Mia shell-shocked and a drunken mess for practically the rest of the film. Although it was treated as comedy in the film, I saw it as actually a warning against how alcoholism clouded judgement and sense. The term "alcohol amnesia" was brought up to describe Mia's condition of totally forgetting what she did while under the influence. Coleen Garcia may be a little uneven being a comic (like when talking drunk nonsense to her pet bromeliad plant Bru), but she was cute doing it. Her tears, though, were very affecting.

Because of Jay's occupation as a forester, the film also took its opportunity to espouse several environmental concerns, from climate change to open-pit mining. Some people may criticize this as mere padding, but I thought it was nice the way they integrated science into the script with Jay's quirk for regurgitating facts and figures. Although his mini-lectures may not always be as stimulating as he'd like, Edgar Allan Guzman effectively delivered being this charming nerd. I also liked the neatly shelved rock collection Jay had in his room, a very interesting detail hardly seen in local films.

This is the first Filipino film released this year and, as such, the first local film of the whole decade. Casting an untested pair of actors as leads in a rom-com is really a big risk for the producer. Several rom-coms last year ended up in the red because of its non-star casting, but they also had weak scripts to blame. But then, there are notable exceptions like "Write About Love" with novel casting but a great script.

"Mia" may have a rather unimaginative title, but this latest work by director Veronica Velasco is actually quite good and deserves to be given a chance to do well at the box office.

This review was originally published in the author's blog, "Fred Said."