Fight for Love

A perfect blend of romance and slapstick comedy

Before I start my review of “Fight For Love“ (FFL - “VÌ YÊU MÀ CHIẾN“), I’d like to make some remarks about the BL genre in general. For more than a decade, BL has been dominated by Thai productions. The reason is simple – it’s money. Some Thai production companies put huge budgets into their series - money generated by high numbers of viewers, but also invested by sponsors who have realized that product placements in popular BL shows help promoting their brands.

But like every coin, the success of Thai BL has two sides. Lots of companies think that there’s easy money to be made, and so they hire some handsome students who know nothing about acting, and they employ cheap and inexperienced writers, directors, and editors. The result is a vast number of series, many of which are very hard to watch because of poor scripts, bad directing, and abysmal acting. Of course, there are some great, high quality Thai series, but they are outnumbered by weak productions.

The BL scene in some other countries is exactly the opposite. I’m not talking about China and Myanmar, where the genre is obstructed by strict censorship. I’m talking about countries like the Philippines, Cambodia or Vietnam, where BL productions rarely find sponsors and investors, and as the money that is earned on Youtube, the most widely used platform, often doesn’t even bring in production costs, the industry in these countries is struggling for survival. Unfortunately, platforms like Gagaoolala, Iqiyi, WeTV or Viki very rarely include series from these countries.

But as I said before, every coin has two sides, and the good side here is that money can’t buy creativity, and “Fight For Love“ is another good example of how to make a beautiful series with a low budget. RL Studio have proven several times that they can do this – their series “The Star Always Follow You“ (see my review no. 24) or their movie “Stormy Honeymoon“ (no. 33) are only two examp...