MANILA, Philippines?Eugene Domingo is a heap of humor and slapstick in ?Kimmy Dora,? a comedy of errors on the sibling rivalry between twins. Eugene portrays both sisters, and her performance runs the gamut of comic inventiveness.

As Kimmy, she?s the ruthless CEO of the family conglomerate who ignores calls from Henry Sy and Don Jaime Zobel and tells MVP pointblank she?s buying him out. She?s the Devil in Prada who, finding an employee wearing the same designer outfit as hers, forces her to strip. She?s the man-eater to Dingdong Dantes? hunky nerd who flies into a raging fit when she learns he?s smitten by her sister, Dora.

Dora?s mental retardation makes her the antipodal twin to Kimmy. Her sweetness and kindness endear her to everyone, but her condition so worries her father (Ariel Ureta in a no-beat-missed performance) that he signs a will to leave most of the family possessions to her.

When Kimmy finds out, she erroneously orders her sycophantic executive assistant (Baron Geisler) to get rid of Dora. But the kidnappers bungle things so they end up abducting Kimmy. Concerned that the news would rattle her father, who has just survived a stroke, Dora pretends to be her sister and the result is an old-fashioned screwball comedy that delivers a ton of laughs.

?Kimmy Dora? may be taken as another one of those women?s studies by its writer Cris Martinez, who wrote Jeffrey Jeturian?s ?Bridal Shower? and who wrote and directed ?100.? ?Bridal? takes a funny but very withering look on Filipino women and their various forms of dependency, especially on men. ?Kimmy Dora? makes more or less the same scathing claim, but with less edge since it is, after all, an all-out comedy. It also helps that the movie is directed by Joyce Bernal, who usually makes the men in her films either ham-fisted idiots or rugged icons as to be totally unreachable. Both depictions are easily detected in ?Kimmy Dora,? such as the inept abductors and Zanjoe Marudo?s bucolic but sexy farmer whose no-nonsense attitude tames the wild and temperamental Kimmy and sweeps her off her feet.

Made on a tight budget, the movie is produced by superstar Piolo Pascual and it has the look and feel of an out-of-the-studio-mainstream effort but with hardly any hint that some of its production demands have been glossed over. Big-name stars appear on cameo but, typical of Bernal?s humor, they?re made to play very unglamorous roles: Eric Santos, Christian Bautista, Vhong Navarro and Paulo Ballesteros appear as waiters.

But the best thing about ?Kimmy Dora? is Eugene Domingo. It confirms her status as the country?s funniest comic ingénue.