This review may contain spoilers
darker vertical mini series
Overall: this is a darker series with an unsatisfying ending. Watched for free on Shortime app, 46 episodes about 1.5 minutes each (episode 1-5 were free, I watched 6-10 with ads that showed under buying the passes, 11-15 with watching 10 ads on rewards page, daily random box and check in, fortune read and made it up to 18, it took 4 days to watch for free which wasn't bad) Shortime also has Falling For My Boss and The Secrets of Male Students both of which I liked better than Buddy Boy.Content Warnings: attempted suicide, teacher/student relationship and grooming, child abuse, past death, non con kiss, non con picture taking, blackmail, manhandling, homophobia, slap, fight, beaten up, unwanted public outing
What I Liked
- how a characters age was given thru conversation
- bonding moments
Room For Improvement
- that teacher needed some major consequences
- cliche female character
- the ending was not satisfying (he tried to drown himself, other guy saves him and then that's the end)
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This review may contain spoilers
good for eyes and ears :)
acting was superb, actors with their performance were superb, visuals were superb. I like the voice of the actors a lot.what I dislike was ending of the story - not satisfying like cutted just a bit before the end. I would like to more reveal after that incident.
vertical - ok, I can live with that, but the tons of ads I had to watch just to see the whole thing was over my head.
I would like the guys see in another series :)
prepare for homophobic behaviour, dramatic scene, domestic violenc.
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The cinema is full of magnificent villains that make your stomach churn and you despise them to no end, but there are other evil ones, who, despite being good too, stand out for the love they end up getting. Whether because of their charisma, the quality of their interpretation or because of their personal history that makes it clear that they are villains due to their circumstances, and because they have a corrupted soul.
Why are we so attracted to villains? What is special about them? It was Alfred Hitchcock, the British nationalized American filmmaker and screenwriter, who developed an impressive career and was recognized as the master of suspense, who stated that a film is worth what its villain is worth. And it couldn't be more true. That corrupt force of nature in harmony with good motivation is capable of raising a film or television product when it is most needed or elevating it to the altars. The filmmaker himself gave us several unforgettable villains, such as the couple formed by Brandon Shaw and Phillip Morgan in 'Rope' (1948), but the best was always Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), son of Norma Bates, in 'Psycho' (1960).
Stanley Kubrick was another director who knew how to get the most out of an undesirable person, including Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) in 'A Clockwork Orange', the 1971 Anglo-American science fiction film, and Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) in 'The Shining', the 1980 Anglo-American feature film of the psychological horror subgenre.
For a long time, television and movies were about the "good guys" doing their job. 'The Sopranos', the American television series created and produced by David Chase and HBO, premiered in the United States on January 10, 1999 on the HBO cable television channel, which broadcast it uninterruptedly until its ending on June 10 from 2007, showed that audiences are also interested in seeing bad guys in action. The best works of the last 20 years confirm a strong inclination towards unpleasant protagonists.
Isn't life sometimes a horror movie? Aren't those "script twists" something we have to learn to deal with?
All of these works, and many others, share in common that disloyal, twisted, infamous, traitor and murderer with whom, however contradictory it may seem, we sometimes come to feel a certain empathy.
Although without becoming a jewel of South Korean television like the aforementioned films, 'Buddy Boy' ('Beodi Boi'), the short series of said nationality filmed vertically, and which follows Yuho (Cha Seung Yun), a boy from 18 years old who, together with Beom-jin, his father (Son Seung –taek), takes refuge in a quiet rural town due to the bankruptcy of the family business, shows several evil characters.
In the village, the young city dweller will begin a secret romance with Jin Gu (Lee Tae Gyu), while he will have to deal with Rina's jealousy, the domestic violence exerted by his father, and the disapproval of the conservative, patriarchal and heteronormative community.
Very intelligently, the director transfers to the heart of a small rural population the reality of a society that still does not recognize the right to equal marriage, and where there is no government policy to protect against the discrimination that persists in South Korea against members of the LGBT+ community.
The miniseries portrays how these people must hide their homosexuality for fear of being harassed and excluded even by their own family.
Repressions have always been the worst punishment that a person can receive or promote. 'Buddy Boy' explicitly expresses the levels that people who live sexually tied and repressed can reach. In just over 60 minutes it shows us a reality that exists in many countries in the world, including European countries, or the United States, where politically and socially they call themselves "advanced" in terms of human rights and respect for sexual and gender diversity but they still continue to maintain and promote conservative spaces and communities that do not accept manifestations of sexual diversity. 'Buddy Boy' serves as a denunciation of this reality.
The romantic and youth drama of 46 episodes of approximately 1.5 minutes each, produced by KS&Pick and promoted by the Shortime application, in which 'Falling For My Boss' and 'The Secrets of Male Students' can also be seen, has great amount of hidden messages, so watching it over and over again always encourages you to discover something new.
A father who physically and psychologically abuses his son, whose age he does not even know; the same father guilty of not having been able to save the marriage or the family business; a teacher named Kyung-Hyeon Ju (Soo-kyung Soo) who has sexual relations with an orphaned teenager whom she raised as her own son, while demanding from her students the "respect that I have taught them in the classroom"; A toxic young woman who has the obsession of winning the affection of the city boy, even knowing that he is not in love with her, but with the boy who sits next to her in class, moves evil beings.
Yuho's father, Rina and the teacher are very interesting imperfect characters, having more room for growth and allowing drama to be created due to their difficult characteristics. These actors and actresses show that the more imperfect the characters, the more drama.
Evil characters like them, who lost the compass of anything similar to love, brotherhood or paternal love, the latter two concepts never handled in the story, since it is understood that these people are guided by other compasses. That is why I am surprised by the rapid evolution of the first two characters towards the end of the story, when one shows that he has accepted the homosexuality of the two boys, while the other shows that he is worried about his son in the face of a possible tragic outcome. The teacher finds no redemption.
Welcome the villains to BL series and films. The reason there are more bad guys on screen now has to do with the fact that screenwriters want to create more unpredictable stories that have never been told before.
On the other hand, 'Buddy Boy' explores the clash of Christian and Buddhist religions, the conflicts between city and rural cultures, jealousy, unrequited love, the Church's view of homosexuality, homophobia, internalized homophobia, father-children relationships, the escape from repression through suicide, the teacher-student relationship, among other topics.
Bringing the issue of homosexuality to the heart of a Christian church, to seek to identify the two young people as homosexuals and expect the disapproval of the parishioners and the priest, is truly evil, especially if it is proceeded with selfish ends.
The character of Rina reminds me of Plenn Pleng (Aim Satida Pinsinchai), the girlfriend of Knock (Tul Pakorn Thanasrivanitchai) in 'Together With Me', or Namning (Brownie Supassara Suratnamaniporn), the love of Ram (Pop Pattarapol Wallaphasiri) in 'The Cuisine', who will commit real crimes trying to prevent love from growing between the objects of their desires and the boys loved by these. But unlike those, the character played by Shin Sang evolves towards the epilogue.
The open ending leaves a light at the end of the tunnel with the possible reconciliation of the two young people, because at the end of the day they love each other, and once both Rina and Yuho's father understand and accept the situation in which the two are involved protagonists.
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