A Sweet Fantasy Web Series, Though Sadly Lacking...
My 20th Twenty is pretty much what the title suggests; Kang So Won ( Choi Yu Ju) was turning twenty during the millennium ( 2000). However, after encountering a bitter witch ( Go Soo Hee )who takes offence at So Won's actions, she is cursed to remain at the age of twenty forever.
While sounding like a dream come true to remain youthful, So Won finds her situation turning into a living nightmare. Her friends and those close to So Won cannot remember her after a year. She is forced to move from different jobs and places after a year ( due to the spell) and remains like a living ghost.
Now chronologically in her forties, So Won is desperate to try and find a lead about the witch and finally break her curse. After several mishaps, she meets cold and stoic Min Kang Hyun ( Jung Su Bin) and the kindhearted Jo Sang Wook ( Dawon). Despite bearing a close resemblance to her first love, Kang Hyun is the opposite of him in both temperament and personality. However, as the series progresses and So Won finds herself chasing further leads, she becomes more involved with the two youths.
For a short web series, My 20th Twenty has a surprisingly interesting premise: a girl is cursed to remain twenty forever, it is not all it cracks up to be, and she finds love along the way. It is simple, yet sweet. Naturally, it is fair to say the series was never going to be a tour de force example of flawless writing and execution. The characters are fairly cookie-cutter from other drama and pretty much ticks all the boxes you would expect from a short romance series; the oblivious, yet charming female lead, the stoic male lead and the bubbly second male lead, jealousy, and a hidden secret somewhere in the midst. It is a fair cliché series with characters only playing their roles to be assets to the short plot.
The acting is better than you would think, shockingly. Naturally, there are some more questionable and cheesy acting moments, but the main leads delivered fairly well, with all things considered.
The execution of the web series was one of its major downfalls. It would naturally be a rush, and try to fit in as much as possible into such a short time. Still, the heavy focus on the romantic factor for most of the narrative often left the more intriguing elements of the female lead's quest to find the witch in the background, leading to a rushed resolution. The ending was fairly sweet but was a byproduct of this writing direction.
Overall, My 20th Twenty is a fairly lighthearted and sugary web series with a romantic factor and a surprisingly interesting premise. Sadly, time restraints, a restricted budget and writing did mean the series felt a little easy to forget from short web dramas with similar plot scenarios and setups. Overall, it made an easygoing binge-watch, but little else.
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This review may contain spoilers
Twenty forever?
Actually, I was not going to write a review for this drama but then I noticed that there weren't any so I might as well jott down a few of my impressions. I just love this kind of fantasy and this one has an novel way to work with time!It is a story of a young woman who, on the eve of becoming twenty, categorically refuses to buy a packet of chewing gum from a bizarre looking woman. Little does she know that that woman is a witch who goes on to curse her, as a repercussion, to remain 20 forever. So on every New Year, the girl's life gets reset and everything she'd done gets deleted: her family and friends do not know her anymore. Everything starts to change when , twenty years later, she meets her first love's doppelganger, creates solid connections with old and new friends and finally finds the witch again.
As you can see, I loved the story. The writing was good and I found it rather convincing since the initial set up was very complicated (time passes for everyone except for her) . She becomes a forty year old woman inside a twenty year old body but still references things from the first time that she was 20 leaving people around her flabbergasted! The drama is funny and sweet. The actors were OK, nothing to write home about, they emoted enough but acting was obviously not their cup of tea. They were easy on the eye so the lack of acting chops are to be overseen since the story is fun to watch even without fireworks. Actually, the FL had better chemistry with the SML, as usual but the ML was cute as a brooding button! One of the most interesting characters was the witch: over the top scary make up who eventually gets sick with Alzheimer's but manages to find a few sane moments to sort the FL out.I did not like the witch very much because of the way they presented her: such a cliché when they could have done something more subtle and therefore scarier!
All in all, they managed to keep the second hand embarrassment to a strict minimum: though it was a bit difficult to believe that the FL was not at ease with all the internet speak: it sometimes seemed she was stuck in time, as if she did not follow the societal evolutions over those twenty years of being 20!
Koreans are definitely very creative when they deal with time problems: be it time slip, time travel, time curse, groundhog day! I am just so happy to have discovered K-dramas because they do not seem to be afraid of any complicated subject and time is very very complicated.
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The story have a lot of inconsistencies but it is overall good
The story is simple, there is a good message that I can learn from and the format is similar like other web drama but there is a lot of gap that was not addressed in the drama. The female lead's backstory could turn into a horror or thriller. I expected it was about someone who still looks 20 yet everyone she knew still knew her and kept in touch but it's only the society who treats her differently but that was not the case. It made so much sense as I relate to the story with the title.The gap is about the scene where her parents also forget her on new years. There are many possibilities that this would not make the female lead the way she is. She would suffer greatly of having no house at the first restart on being 20 again. Another gap is when she still had the mindset of an average middle aged woman even after living as a 20 year old that forces her to keep on finding work and keep up with society. The curse that was put on her would lead her to focus more on fixing her life and finances rather than finding love.
I rated this quite high because I tried eliminating the possible storylines of the female lead. I also think that if she found a way to have a permanent source of income like a business that doesn't restart at New years, she could enroll in a college with different degrees.
Anyways, moving on to the male lead. The male lead isn't bad to anyone like the ones portrayed in other dramas. His personality is surprisingly soft and the storytelling on how he quite have a bit of a bad attitude is well written. There is a clear process on how the drama shows his trust for the female lead + character development. The drama perfectly suits as a romcom when it is the point of view of the male lead since he was the one experiencing this for the first time, the realizations and development in his life.
In case of the female lead, there should be no male lead if this were to be in her point of view, the genre would be a horror lol
Great acting on part of Yuju and Subin!!
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This review may contain spoilers
Como seria ser jovem para sempre? Ter eternamente a aparência de 20 anos? Mas e se ao final de cada ano todas as pessoas ao redor esquecessem de sua existência? Começaria a parecer uma maldição, certo? Pois bem, essa é premissa deste minidrama. Após se recusar a comprar doce de uma senhora estranha, nossa protagonista se vê amaldiçoada a viver eternamente com sua aparência de 20 anos e seus amigos e familiares esquecem sua existência. Qualquer conexão que ela constrói é apagada ao final de cada ano. Então ela passa os 20 anos seguintes de sua vida procurando essa "bruxa" que a amaldiçoou para retirar a maldição e envelhecer como todos. Ao seguir uma pista da presença da bruxa em um resort ela acaba encontrando um rapaz muito parecido com o seu namorado do passado e também sua amiga de juventude que passa a ser sua chefe. O reencontro com a amiga, o sósia do ex-namorado e as amizades que ela vai fazendo ao longo do vigésimo ano da maldição aumentam a urgência da protagonista em acabar com a maldição e finalmente completar 21 anos.
Embora fosse óbvio que a protagonista conseguiria acabar com a maldição e teria um final feliz com o sósia do ex-namorado, eu estava torcendo para desta vez a/o roteirista ousasse escrever um final feliz da protagonista com o personagem masculino secundário, por sinal bem mais interessante que o protagonista, porém mais uma vez optaram pelo óbvio. Sem contar o clichê dos clichês do protagonista ser aquele tipinho arrogante que no começo trata a protagonista feminina com frieza, mas no final acaba apaixonado.
Enfim, o que destacaria da história é que no final a protagonista opta por quebrar a maldição mesmo que isso significasse que ela mudasse para uma aparência de 40 anos. Ela opta por arriscar porque ser esquecida mais uma vez seria mais dolorido que envelhecer vinte anos em um dia. O desejo inicial de ser jovem para sempre acaba se tornando insignificante diante da solidão que ser jovem significava para a protagonista. Mas como se trata de uma drama juvenil tudo termina bem.
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