1
manicmuse
NYC!
The best way for me to describe this drama is a train wreck that I couldn't look away from. "Birth of a Beauty" is a romcom that turns quickly into one of the most ridiculous melodramas I have ever seen. The story makes absolutely no sense, and demands that you suspend complete disbelief from the start, yet somehow it still manages to be entertaining enough that I just couldn't bring myself to drop it.
What I think saves this drama is the cast, particularly Joo Sang Wook and Han Ye Seul's chemistry. Han Ye Seul plays Sara, the beauty in the title, who has undergone a complete transformation due to a tragic past. Joo Sang Wook plays Han Tae Hee, who has a mysterious past of his own, and who helps Sara adjust to her new life. They are very cute together, which will probably get romance fans hooked early on, but it doesn't take long before the melodrama takes over, and by the halfway mark romcom fans may be ready to abandon this drama completely.
Eventually cute banter between the two of them (I loved that he calls her Ahjumma) turns into frustrating obstacles filled with clichés. There's also a cast of villains that are really good at being horrible, that inspire an elaborate revenge plot, and the quintessential kdrama battle over the family business. Now I love a good melodrama, but like I said, I think the plot made very little sense, and was full of holes. This is why I had to give the cast a 9. They really are what kept this drama watchable. Sure, some characters were definitely more one dimensional than others, but in such an overdramatic drama, they did managed to keep the story somehow believable enough for me to want to see how it all would all end.
Another issue I had with this drama is that 21 episodes felt way too long. They do manage to pack in lots of extreme plot points, but I think they mostly backfired and made the story start to drag and feel boring. I was tired of getting mad at characters for making dumb choices, watching repetitive scenes between characters, and seeing too many flashbacks. I could not see myself ever watching this drama again, which may seem harsh, but the good parts just weren't good enough for me to want to sit through all of these episodes again.
This drama does attempt to reiterate the idea that what makes a woman beautiful is more than how she looks on the outside, but the problem is that it still makes Ha Jae Sook's looks the punchline of every joke possible. In my opinion she's the real MVP of this drama, and her scenes were the only ones that made me feel even slightly emotional, but I hated the fact that she was basically branded as practically hideous. I can't imagine looking like her and feeling good while watching this, no matter how much this drama tried to make the plot about self acceptance, and inner strength, the damage was already done. Some parts literally felt like a commercial for diet pills.
Overall, I thought this drama was a cute romcom about an unlikely couple overcoming obstacles together, that got hijacked by a bad revenge melodrama. I say this as a person who is normally a fan of epic revenge stories, but this story just made too little sense. By the end, I wasn't disappointed that I completed it, but most of the interest I had in the beginning was long gone. I can't recommend watching this knowing that there are so many other dramas that tell a similar story much better... there are even some dramas that I thought were mediocre but I would recommend them before this one. Still, I didn't hate it, so if you're a fan of anyone in the cast, that might be an incentive to watch this one just to say you did.
What I think saves this drama is the cast, particularly Joo Sang Wook and Han Ye Seul's chemistry. Han Ye Seul plays Sara, the beauty in the title, who has undergone a complete transformation due to a tragic past. Joo Sang Wook plays Han Tae Hee, who has a mysterious past of his own, and who helps Sara adjust to her new life. They are very cute together, which will probably get romance fans hooked early on, but it doesn't take long before the melodrama takes over, and by the halfway mark romcom fans may be ready to abandon this drama completely.
Eventually cute banter between the two of them (I loved that he calls her Ahjumma) turns into frustrating obstacles filled with clichés. There's also a cast of villains that are really good at being horrible, that inspire an elaborate revenge plot, and the quintessential kdrama battle over the family business. Now I love a good melodrama, but like I said, I think the plot made very little sense, and was full of holes. This is why I had to give the cast a 9. They really are what kept this drama watchable. Sure, some characters were definitely more one dimensional than others, but in such an overdramatic drama, they did managed to keep the story somehow believable enough for me to want to see how it all would all end.
Another issue I had with this drama is that 21 episodes felt way too long. They do manage to pack in lots of extreme plot points, but I think they mostly backfired and made the story start to drag and feel boring. I was tired of getting mad at characters for making dumb choices, watching repetitive scenes between characters, and seeing too many flashbacks. I could not see myself ever watching this drama again, which may seem harsh, but the good parts just weren't good enough for me to want to sit through all of these episodes again.
This drama does attempt to reiterate the idea that what makes a woman beautiful is more than how she looks on the outside, but the problem is that it still makes Ha Jae Sook's looks the punchline of every joke possible. In my opinion she's the real MVP of this drama, and her scenes were the only ones that made me feel even slightly emotional, but I hated the fact that she was basically branded as practically hideous. I can't imagine looking like her and feeling good while watching this, no matter how much this drama tried to make the plot about self acceptance, and inner strength, the damage was already done. Some parts literally felt like a commercial for diet pills.
Overall, I thought this drama was a cute romcom about an unlikely couple overcoming obstacles together, that got hijacked by a bad revenge melodrama. I say this as a person who is normally a fan of epic revenge stories, but this story just made too little sense. By the end, I wasn't disappointed that I completed it, but most of the interest I had in the beginning was long gone. I can't recommend watching this knowing that there are so many other dramas that tell a similar story much better... there are even some dramas that I thought were mediocre but I would recommend them before this one. Still, I didn't hate it, so if you're a fan of anyone in the cast, that might be an incentive to watch this one just to say you did.
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