Kontrabida Academy review — A Filipino camp celebration of justice, empowerment and joy

Kontrabida Academy bursts onto the screen with the kind of playful excess that doesn’t apologize for being too much. It’s camp by design, a film that dresses its satire in sequins and glitter while poking at the sharp edges of everyday injustice.

Gigi begins as the ultimate pushover. She bows to her boss, yields to her mother’s demands, stays loyal to a boyfriend of seven years who betrays her without shame. She’s the woman who lowers her head so many times she practically forgets what it means to stand tall.

Then comes the twist, a deliciously absurd one. Through a TV won in the restaurant's raffle, she’s pulled into the world of Kontrabida Academy, a training ground for villains. And here the film flips its premise into something joyous.

What looks like villainy at first, learning tricks, exposing rotten secrets, claiming a new name, becomes a language of survival.

From Gigi to Gia

The metamorphosis is both funny and pointed. The Academy’s director mocks her original name as too cute, the kind of label that keeps a girl small. So, Gigi is reborn as Gia, following the lineage of villain names that almost always end with a dramatic “ah.” It’s a reinvention that feels both satirical and empowering, staged with the flair of a soap opera initiation rite.

By day, she still punches the clock, stuck in the grind of ordinary exploitation. By night, she slips through the screen into Kontrabida Academy, studying how to turn other people’s corruption into her own power.

And while the curriculum is framed as how to be a villain, the results are closer to rough justice. She humiliates abusers, checks hypocrisy, and in the process saves lives she didn’t even know she was touching.

A soundtrack that seduces

One of the earliest surprises of Kontrabida Academy is its music. For viewers unfamiliar with Filipino soundscapes, the soundtrack is a revelation. It's playful yet sharp, carrying the same mix of joy and bite as the story itself. The songs pull us into a new rhythm of cinema and set the stage for the satire and heartwarming end that follows.

The film knows the power of sound, and it uses it to make every shift in tone land with confidence.

A boyfriend who betrays

Before Gia even finds her new self, the narrative makes sure she has nothing left to lose. Her boyfriend of seven years cheats, and that revelation cuts not only as heartbreak but as another layer of humiliation.

Instead of making her smaller, the betrayal becomes fuel. Kontrabida Academy doesn’t linger in melodrama. It turns the moment into just one more reason for Gigi to shed her old skin. It's a reminder that sometimes the push toward reinvention comes from the ugliest wounds.

A film that knows how to laugh at power

What makes Kontrabida Academy sparkle is how unapologetically camp it is. The fake luxury brands her mother flaunts are written wrong on purpose: Balenciagah with the extra "h" at the end, Bvlgari missing its “i,” Jimmy Chos instead of Jimmy Choo, such details that are both punchlines and social critique rolled into one. They mock consumer culture while showing how fragile status can be.

The soap operas within the film, like Law of the Oppressed, parody the way media has always divided women into saints and witches.

And Gia’s laughter, cruel but honest, cracks open the absurdity of those binaries. The joke lands because it's both silly and true.

Kontrabida Academy as social critique

Beneath the glitter and the parody, Kontrabida Academy works as sharp social commentary. It asks what happens when a woman decides she is done playing nice. It shows that villainy can sometimes be nothing more than refusing to stay small, refusing to let others drain her.

The Kontrabida Academy is less a school of evil than a crash course in self-preservation. The humor only makes the message stronger.

Leaving with a smile

By the time the credits roll, Kontrabida Academy has done more than lampoon tropes. It has given its heroine a crooked kind of empowerment. Gia’s journey proves that playing the villain can be another way of rewriting survival, and the joy of the film is how unashamedly it embraces that paradox.

It ends not in bitterness but in laughter, the kind that comes from finally recognizing the script and choosing to write your own.

Rating with a touch of flair: 5 out of 5 campy crowns stolen from the patriarchy’s closet.