The third and final movie in Si Doel trilogy obtains the official title, Akhir Kisah Cinta si Doel (trans. The End of Doel’s Love Story), for one apparent purpose> It lets the audiences finally learn that this is the endgame. This is the real finale to Si Doel’s chronicle that has been going on for 27 years, starting off as a telly phenomenon before spawning television movies and pointing out at this very moment.
Taking off where the second movie left out, this final part—like the previous movies—slowly crawls around the protagonist’s mundane life in Jakarta suburbs as Doel (Rano Karno) ponders on the bizarre love triangle between him, his wife, Zaenab (Maudy Koesnaedi, ), and the wife who left him, Sarah (Cornelia Agatha). Meanwhile, Little Dul (Rey Bong), Sarah’s son, sets out to live with Doel, his biological father, for the whole school break. This event will finally trigger what may seem to be the closure—the answer to the long-awaited question, “who will Si Doel eventually choose to live with?”
While the answer gives out unimaginable relief to fans of the series, the road to finally get to it is unimaginably dull. After three movies, everyone has finally got their voice in the story but Doel, ironically. Sarah has her voice in the previous movie as she eventually lets go of the husband she still loves; Zaenab, eventually, has the voice to finally decide her own happiness. Little Dul has his own voice as well as he relegates all the anger from inside his soul. And yet, Doel is stuck in his own indecisiveness.
Rano Karno, who writes and directs the closure, seems to be clueless about his own character’s eventual direction. It feels like he projects his frustration in writing the character into the eventual script. The result is a frustrating indecisiveness drama for the audiences as well. Akhir Kisah Cinta si Doel is an anticlimactic end. After all, the whole trilogy can easily be made into a 2-hour movie and the story will not lose anything at all.
