Camelot
New York
2016 was truly the year for kdramas. But with anything good in abundance, there must be a little bad. Love in the Moonlight is a stain on an otherwise impressive year. This review will center around our two main leads as they were truly the make or in this case break of the show for me.
First for our crown prince Lee Young. I'd like to start by saying that I thought Park Bo Gum did a fairly good job with the material and character he had been given. His performance was solid and he breathed much-needed life into the show. However, not even Bo Gum could save this snoozefest of a character. Lee Young is above all else boring. He has fun with his friends and chases after girls and behaves just like a Disney prince. But that's the problem. Disney princes, at least the more classic ones, are dull. They lack personality or depth of character. This is fine for Disney for many reasons, not the least of which that the characters are cartoons and the movies made for children, but I don't think Love in the Moonlight had the same target demographic as the average Disney movie. Lee Young is not a fleshed-out real person. He is a caricature of a prince meant to appeal widely but shallowly to as many women as possible. Another trait that Lee Young shares with many a Disney prince is, shall we say nicely, his less than impressive intelligence. The boy is dumb as a rock and if you think I'm being harsh why don't you try to defend how this man could possibly think Ra On was a man for as long as he did if he was even slightly smarter than a rock.
That point brings me to Ra On. Unfortunately, I have even fewer positive things to say about her than I did about Lee Young. Ra On is incredibly immature. She speaks, acts, and thinks like a child. She too was not particularly well fleshed out and felt like a child's idea of a fairytale girl. Every time she was given the opportunity to think things through, to grow, and make a wise decision she instead chose to simply not think. It's not so much that she was impulsive but that her actions mimicked those of a child. After all, we do not say a 6-year-old is impulsive. They simply lack reasoning skills and intelligence. She also had almost no chemistry with our male lead. They were stiff as boards every time they interacted. And I really thought we left statue kisses back in 2012 but I guess I was mistaken. Where I felt much of Lee Young's character defects came from bad writing I must say that I felt much of Ra On's faults stemmed from bad acting. Kim Yoo Jung failed in every way as an actress and was simply poorly cast. This drama is first and foremost a gender bender. Yoo Jung looks about as manly as a nine-year-old girl in pigtails. Her soft feminine features and high girlish voice made the entire premise unbelievable from the very start. Admittedly this is not Yoo Jung's fault and instead, the blame lays with the casting director on this count, but still. How was anyone supposed to believe this girl was a man? And again it made the other characters, particularly Lee Young, seem stupid for not seeing what was so clearly in front of their faces. Yoo Jung also just did a poor job of acting like a man. She had no manly mannerisms or gestures. Nothing to say to her fellow male characters that she was one of them. She stuck out like a sore thumb the whole time.
This drama was more like a children's movie than a kdrama. I am its target audience and yet I felt the whole time that I should go find a child to justify watching something so silly and immature. I wouldn't recommend this drama and am sad it blighted 2016.
First for our crown prince Lee Young. I'd like to start by saying that I thought Park Bo Gum did a fairly good job with the material and character he had been given. His performance was solid and he breathed much-needed life into the show. However, not even Bo Gum could save this snoozefest of a character. Lee Young is above all else boring. He has fun with his friends and chases after girls and behaves just like a Disney prince. But that's the problem. Disney princes, at least the more classic ones, are dull. They lack personality or depth of character. This is fine for Disney for many reasons, not the least of which that the characters are cartoons and the movies made for children, but I don't think Love in the Moonlight had the same target demographic as the average Disney movie. Lee Young is not a fleshed-out real person. He is a caricature of a prince meant to appeal widely but shallowly to as many women as possible. Another trait that Lee Young shares with many a Disney prince is, shall we say nicely, his less than impressive intelligence. The boy is dumb as a rock and if you think I'm being harsh why don't you try to defend how this man could possibly think Ra On was a man for as long as he did if he was even slightly smarter than a rock.
That point brings me to Ra On. Unfortunately, I have even fewer positive things to say about her than I did about Lee Young. Ra On is incredibly immature. She speaks, acts, and thinks like a child. She too was not particularly well fleshed out and felt like a child's idea of a fairytale girl. Every time she was given the opportunity to think things through, to grow, and make a wise decision she instead chose to simply not think. It's not so much that she was impulsive but that her actions mimicked those of a child. After all, we do not say a 6-year-old is impulsive. They simply lack reasoning skills and intelligence. She also had almost no chemistry with our male lead. They were stiff as boards every time they interacted. And I really thought we left statue kisses back in 2012 but I guess I was mistaken. Where I felt much of Lee Young's character defects came from bad writing I must say that I felt much of Ra On's faults stemmed from bad acting. Kim Yoo Jung failed in every way as an actress and was simply poorly cast. This drama is first and foremost a gender bender. Yoo Jung looks about as manly as a nine-year-old girl in pigtails. Her soft feminine features and high girlish voice made the entire premise unbelievable from the very start. Admittedly this is not Yoo Jung's fault and instead, the blame lays with the casting director on this count, but still. How was anyone supposed to believe this girl was a man? And again it made the other characters, particularly Lee Young, seem stupid for not seeing what was so clearly in front of their faces. Yoo Jung also just did a poor job of acting like a man. She had no manly mannerisms or gestures. Nothing to say to her fellow male characters that she was one of them. She stuck out like a sore thumb the whole time.
This drama was more like a children's movie than a kdrama. I am its target audience and yet I felt the whole time that I should go find a child to justify watching something so silly and immature. I wouldn't recommend this drama and am sad it blighted 2016.
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