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Bangkok Traffic Love Story thai movie review
Completed
Bangkok Traffic Love Story
3 people found this review helpful
by MusicalVeggies
Oct 22, 2017
Completed
Overall 7.0
Story 7.0
Acting/Cast 8.5
Music 6.5
Rewatch Value 6.0
This is a cute and light-hearted romantic comedy film.

STORY (No spoilers)
A simple storyline about a 30-year old single Thai woman (Mei Li) who is rather untrained in the dating game feeling the pressure of finding a boyfriend after all her friends are married. She meets Lung who is a night-shift engineer for the Bangkok Transit System and goes about attempting to start and build a relationship with him.

As a movie, such a simple plot-line works very well because the show focuses a lot on Mei Li's everyday life and if you like slice-of-life shows, this will really appeal to you. There are lovely little snapshots and scenes of Mei Li and her middle-class chinese family interacting with each other, of Mei Li and her rather funny workplace boss and sale products, and of Mei Li trying to come to grips with how to date a man she is interested in.

There is also an introduction to the Bangkok transportation system, from motorbike taxis, to riverboat taxis and of course, the rail/ train system. As this film was also released as part of the BTS 10th anniversary, there are a lot of  scenes of the inner workings of the Skytrain infrastructure and operations, which is pretty insightful.

The comedy is most prevalent in the first half of the show where we get an introduction to our lead girl in rather amusing circumstances and it already sets the tone of future comedic scenes to come based on her rather quirky, naive and rather oblivious character. Bulk of the comedy in this show is carried by Mei Li - either character-related or circumstance-related - while Lung (our male lead) is a rather good foil to her character by being the more restrained, grounded and pragmatic of the two. It is a nice little play in their dynamic which comes across cute and sweet.

The romance is under-stated but sweet, and rather mature in spite of Mei Li's inexperience and naive-ness, and I personally quite enjoyed the simple-ness of the movie, and its depiction of a modern single woman's life and struggles in Bangkok.


ACTING/ CAST
CRIS HORWANG as Mei Li, is the unsurprising and undoubted star of this movie. As the movie's main character and main focus, she did a great job in carrying the whole show on her shoulders and her portrayal as the inexperienced and clueless Mei Li is cute, funny and endearing. She really brought life and sparkle to the entire movie.

KEN THEERADETH as Lung, was, as mentioned, a good foil and match to Mei Li's naive and ditzy character. Easy-going and pragmatic, his reactions to Mei Li's hilarious antics prevented the movie from going too far into over-the-top-theatricalism, and grounded it very well. His scenes and screen-time were not as eye-catching nor as extended as Mei Li's, but his screen-presence was always strong.

I also particularly liked Mei Li's family scenes and the lakorn inserts (with Aff Taksaorn)  in the movie. They lend another dimension and aspect to the show which was a nice addition.


RE-WATCH VALUE
As a romantic-comedy movie, it certainly fits the bill very nicely.
I liked the movie's simple plot-premise and the characters, but as enjoyable as it was to watch the film for the first time, the whole show did not excite nor moved me enough for it to sit strongly with me after it ended so on this basis the re-watch value is not that high. But it is a light-hearted and easy watch so for those who are in the mood for something like this, this will be a very good show for you.
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