Incredible Romance
When I first came across Fake Princess, the title sounded cliche and the storyline tropey. I was not familiar with the actors. I thought I would watch the first episode and drop the series. To my surprise, not only I didn't drop it, in fact I was rather enjoying this drama.She is a bandit and he's a crown prince. She wants his telescope so she steals it and they meet, and later marry each other without him knowing the actual identity of the person he is marrying. He has assumed that she's the granddaughter of the Prime Minister, his arch enemy, and a mole planted by him (the Prime Minister). But despite all the suspicions and distrusts, very quickly they fall in love with each other and become inseparable. Everything they do is for each other. Never once they betray the other. Each is always there to save the other. As a viewer, it's hard for me to drop such heart-warming storyline.
I love the Chang Le (Yu Kai Xin/Eleanor Lee) character - altruistic. wise, strong, humble, quick-witted, and intelligent. She is also unusually technologically talented. Yu Kai Xin has that casual expression and body language on her that fits perfectly well for the bandit character she's portraying.
Li Che (Zhao Yi Qin) the crown prince is one of the most adorable crown princes I've ever seen. He doesn't have the normal sharp good look of a crown prince that we are so familiar with. Instead, Li Che tends to have a blank face, a clueless look most of the time, giving the viewers the impression that he's not that smart. Perhaps he's indeed not as smart as his wife, but his devotion and upstandingness capture us all. In front of Chang Le, Li Che is like a teddy bear - compliant, devoted, silly and loving; he becomes a little boy, dependent and gullible. Zhao Yi Qin is new to me but his acting here is wonderful, delivering his character 100%.
My favorite scene of the couple would have been the moment when both try desperately to save the other from the 'poison' both have ingested. The altruism in each is amazing and brings tears to my eyes. Both are faithful to each other with one united heart.
There are 2 incredibly well-developed side couples here - Zhu Yan/Li Heng and Nong Yi/Gong Sun Mo. I have always thought the Zhu Yan/Li Heng couple would have a tragic ending whereas the Nong Yi/Gong Sun Mo a happy one. With a twist of events, they do not end as I have expected, and it's painful to watch the loss.
The villains are despicable characters. Having said that, the Prime Minister is villainous and yet super funny when it comes to his beloved teapots. I laughed so much at those scenes because they are so unexpected of his character. Being mean and nasty but not so intelligent make the villain characters very entertaining and a joy to watch.
The wuxia scenes are extremely well executed. Beautiful fighting choreography, floating hair and flying clothing making the whole scenes stunning to watch. Absolutely wonderful.
Yes, this is a good drama deserves our valuable time to watch. Don't miss it!
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An easy-going romance
Don't expect anything too serious or complicated, this is just something to watch if you want to keep smiling at two dorks that fell for each other. The main characters are lovable and the actors portray them well.There's no cringy humor, nor anything too corny. There're cliches but they are mostly done in a self-aware way, which is refreshing, and if there's angst (concerning the leads), it lasts almost nothing, they don't dwell on that. I honestly just focused on the leads though, so I skimmed through all the drama the other couples went through.
Big plus, which made the drama so enjoyable, the heroine is smart and resourceful and hilarious in a really good way. The leads respect, trust and protect each other throughout the story consistently too, which doesn't happen often, so it's really good to see.
So it's nothing outstanding, but I often need this kind of drama, where everything bad breezes past and the focus is in the good times, so that's why I put a high score. Totally watchable too, in fact, perfect if you're seeing a melodrama and want a little dosis of silliness and happiness.
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Interesting concept, but gets draggy and cliche.
It has my girl Eleanor in it playing a badass master thief. I liked how the FL solved various gadgets and contraptions using her background as a thief. I needed more of it to be honest. This couple was pretty cute together. The theme song was also cute and the music in general was good.However, I found myself "forcing" my way through it and having to watch it at 2x playback speed. It got super political and draggy toward the middle. It wasn't even interesting politics. It was the typical cliche stuff and it brought this drama really down. They waited until the last 2 episodes to clear things up. There were many missed opportunities on pacing through spaced out revelations. Also, I'm kind of petty about the ending of some of the characters, but since this is adapted from a novel, it's understandable.
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This review may contain spoilers
Now these are a strong/smart female characters!
Surprisingly, this drama went better with each episodes instead of worse.The plot is pretty simple and conventional, goes through a bunch of tropes and the beginning is really predictable.
But the strength of this drama is really in the characters.
Ok, let's get it out of the way: Chang Le is a total Mary Sue: unbeatable fighting skills, can pick any lock, but also outwits people on palace etiquette while not even being a noble, knows how to play music, really smart, there is nothing she can't do. Except picking her makeup apparently because gosh that lipgloss was distracting in a historical setting (there's even a scene where Li Che gets a visible stain on his cheek x) ).
But all the other female characters were amazing: strong, smart, kind, nuanced. No cat fight over a man. The mini love triangle is never really one; I've been waiting for so long for a foreign princess rival that actually helps the main couple instead of trying to tear them apart! In this drama the men are actually the damsels in distress, such a refreshing change. Even Zhu Yan who is not the fighty type has her strength with her wisdom, kindness and common sense. This drama shows that (female) characters can be smart, figure out the evil plot without being kept in the dark for 20 episodes AND still be interesting.
There are 3 couples and romance was actually disappointing for me. The main couple went from friendly arranged spouses suspecting each other to life-death lovers in the span of one episode that was super dark and dramatic for no good reason and out of nowhere. No real romantic progression and I didn't feel the chemistry. I couldn't take the amount of cheesiness of their relationship at the end.
Zhu Yan and the 5th prince were your typical Romeo and Juliet tragic lovers from enemy families which is ok, just not my cup of tea and gosh they were overall naive, soppy and stuffy.
Nong Ying's character was great, nuanced, never black nor white, capable but not perfect, but her romance with Gong Sun Mo felt forced and would have better been brought up more gradually.
The OST was ok, I really liked the more modern song by Eleanor but the others didn't really stand out.
TL;DR: no groundbreaking plot nor amazing romance and chemistry but really refreshing change in female characters depiction.
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This review may contain spoilers
Promising start but went old school tropey and left out the creativity
I was sold on this show by its synopsis. I watched a few episodes and it seemed to delivered on the quirky rom-com setup. Cool crown prince in a arranged marriage to a young, beautiful, fighting bandit queen who was also the Chinese version of MacGyver but pretending to be a noble lady! What can go wrong?A lot, is the TL;DR answer.
The longer version is that they took the worst of the old school palace intrigue genre and combined it with tons of clichés subplots and draggy storytelling. Where there should be growth and development like the OTP romance was reduced to love at first sight with a lot of teasing and barely any push-pull. Not that it was necessarily a bad thing but what replaced it was endless scheming and nasty business like tortures and killing of innocent people. It was not as if they don't have something to built upon. They could have kept the light hearted tone going as they spent the first few episodes showing us how clever and resourceful the FL was and how she kept turning the table on the schemers. I won't complain if they build the show around that concept as a female Chinese MacGver would be intriguing. However, that mostly faded away and when it do come back later on in the show, she was used as deus ex machina to move the plot along. Typically, she would stand in front of a trap/lock for a couple of seconds and opened the said lock (which haven't been successfully picked ever) in 2 seconds without hesitation. Of course, on the other side of those door were more macguffins.
There were 3 romantic pairings in total but other than the OTP, the other two pairs were marred by sad, melodramatic manipulations that it was hard to ship them. A lighter hand would had been more in tune with the original tone but by ep10, the show had pretty much gone completely to the dark side.
The drama also arrayed a whole host of evil doers before us from episode 1. Unfortunately, they were one dimensional and came out of palace drama central casting. What is worse was that they were also made fun of at the beginning of the show and shown how inept they were and yet by middle of the show, they WERE the show and did all kinds of horrible things (mostly to their own families and innocent people). This just bring on added frustration to an already tropey show.
In terms of acting, there was nothing to write home about. There was minimal growth in the characters. Most actors just did their job so you didn't get much nuance in their presentations. What I did find odd was that sometimes the younger actors seemed to behave as if they were in a contemporary drama but wearing period costumes. The flip side was that the show also used some of the oldest tropes. Ditto the aesthetics. It was nominally ancient China but some of the setting appeared to be borrowed from different dramas so it just felt unanchored.
Honestly, I was going to drop the show a few times around mid show but decided to push through just to see how tropey it can get and they did not disappoint. The fast forward button was a welcome relieve.
This show would have been a decent (maybe even good) wuxia drama if they stick to the original concept and kept it a light hearted rom-com. Unfortunately, it just ended up being tropey, clichéd and draggy. I cannot recommend this drama unless you are following the leads.
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Plot wise, cliche and good (but there’s so much rom-com dramas out there, I don’t know what can be different anymore). Chemistry between the characters 10/10 as well.
The rom-com element in this drama is 10/10 for sure, personally I felt that the Prince is a little ditzy (relationship wise) but they leads were just too cute in this drama. Other than crying my eyes out for a few episodes, this drama is quite a lighthearted one if I may say so.
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Funny and beautiful drama
At the beginning I was going to watch this, I wouldn't have thought if the story was like this, to be honest this drama is relaxed and doesn't have many serious problems. You can watch it when you are sad and you will smile. At first I also didn't think Liu Yuyao / Changle was Eleanor Lee who played the drama The Big Boss. I just realized it when episode 2/3. but this drama is good and i love it I like the ending and their chemistry is really strong. still regretting the ending Gongsun Mo & Nongying, I didn't expect that to happen. btw I also want to applaud the writer of this drama script because there is a lot of knowledge especially about verses and poetry, this also sharpens my patience a little hahaWas this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
Plot: I enjoyed the simplistic plot and I really liked the reveal of the FL. I enjoyed the side characters NY and GSM a lot. I was not a fan of the second FL and ML’s love story bc it’s really draggy but I was not expecting a happy ending for them so that threw me off lol. I was expecting a happy ending for NY and GSM and I was very angry at the fact that she died, I kept trying to refuse it. The last episode felt anticlimactic tbh. I think it should’ve been a little more idk how to say it but more dramatic but this drama is simple so I guess the last ep makes sense. However, the ending edits were weird in my opinion due to the fact that everyone had a happy ending but NY and GSM. Overall I think the simplistic plot was solid for the first 3/4 of the drama and well executed. Then it kind of lost its focus bc this drama is Fake Princess, but the focus became more of ML than FL. Acting: I watched for Eleanor lol but I enjoyed everyone’s acting, even the older cast, especially the evil grandpa lol he was funny. The ML is cute but manly and no his acting for this character is really good. The second ML was a little eh but I think his acting when he was scheming or evil was much better than when he was innocent. I loved NY and GSM acting, their relationship and interactions were so cute! There were a few sad scenes that were pretty solid. I cried when the ML and FL almost died and cried again when NY died lol.
Cinematography: The drama is very pastel lol, not a lot of dark tones which was pretty nice. The fighting scenes were okay, but I can’t help it but laugh when one person is fighting a bunch of people. I don’t understand why the people are taking turns in one to one battle lol. Other than that, I think the action scenes were decent enough.
Overall: It’s a 8/10 from me and idk if I would rewatch it in the nearby future but I’m happy that I watched this drama. It’s a good drama if you want a simple and easy drama to watch. It’s not absolutely amazing but worth a shot. I recommend it.
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Funny
This series was really hilarious at times, and funny.I enjoyed the FL who was funny and out going. She had a very strong personality along with the other FL .
The story line was a bit bland and I think the ML could have been a bit stronger and not so childish I found him very immature and often annoying, the Second ML was a bit better.
This series is one where can watch and just switch off this nothing great about it or bad about it, it's one of those boredom kinda nothing to do binge watch.
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Behind Every Strong Man Is An Even Stronger Woman
The females in this practically rule the world here, and I lived for it. Plus, we get some lovely romance to boot.Fake Princess follows Changle, an "innocent" robber, as she gets blackmailed into marrying the crown prince, and gets pulled into court politics. What's wonderful about this is that at no point does she succumb to the people around her, but instead is clever and wily. This makes fun adventures and narrowly escaped attempts to catch her in the act.
There is court politics, various poisonings, side rescues and missions, and two other couples to follow along the way. While the plot has some regular fighting for the throne and trickery galore, what really makes it are the couples sprinkled throughout, and the cleverness of the characters (there are some eh moments). There is some drag starting at episode twenty, and a few too quick revelations/solutions, but it picks back up in the last episode and ends satisfactorily for the most part.
The acting was decently good in this, the two main leads and the second coupling/leads carrying for the most part. The love between Changle and the crown prince is wholesome, sweet, and mutually respectful in a way that is a pleasure to watch. It is romance heavy, but the romance in here was perfect. I really kept watching for Changle, Li Che, Mo Sun, and Nong ying.
All in all, a very fun watch. Definitely give it a go if you're looking for a good romance with strong female characters, and some light plot to keep the story moving.
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