Okay, the thing is, I knew I wasn’t going to be crazy about this film, 쩨쩨한 로맨스. It’s not because I have anything necessarily against love stories, to be honest… I don’t go for the Hollywood version of “romance,” to be sure, but look, love is the theme of the vast majority of mainstream literature, including tons of “classic” novels and even some I have liked myself. It’s bizarre to hate films that deal with love and relationships, if you like literature.
That said, cinematic handling of love is usually unsatisfyingly shallow. Still, once in a while a film will do the subject justice… not that I expected that of this movie. I agreed to see it with Miss Jiwaku, just as an excuse to go out. Besides, I figured this might be one of those sex-comedies that have been showing up in Korean cinema. Sometimes those manage to be slightly funny.
Every bloody one of them. If I were able to step into the movie and interact with the characters, I’d be stealing a submachine gun, fully loaded, and leaving a trail of woe and mess in my wake.
The male protagonist is a Hamlet, without the interesting stuff to say, and all of his male friends are annoying bastards too — annoying, and apparently heavily plastic surgeried bastards. The female lead is an annoyingly shallow bitch. Her “best friend” is a complete asshole, as is her elder brother (who is also verging on physically abusive). The romance plot is worse than obvious: it’s hard to be excited when they come together, after hoping against hope that one or both of the characters would be run over by a Mack truck.
My advice? There are better things to do with your time. Like, say, cleaning the grouting in your shower. Or torturing yourself with paperclips. Or, I don’t know… seeing good movies.