mopalia
Violent, excellent, not for the faint of heart
I kept thinking, at the end, that the school district was going to have a really big expense line in facilities after this. Fortunately South Korea has a lot of unused schools where people have moved away from smaller towns, so I imagine some can be re-purposed.Seriously, I am really sorry this is as good as it is. I hate the recent increase in violence in K-dramas, and this was violent in the extreme. But the story is great, the acting is awesome, and the characters are extremely well developed. I ended up watching some sections with one hand on the 10-seconds-forward button, because really, you can watch people being pummeled only so long.
And oddly, the ending did not disappoint, although I could have done without the coda after the credits at the end. All in all, a surprisingly excellent drama if you have the stomach for violence, so be warned. Once you start, you'll find it hard to turn off.
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Not bad, great acting
I don't see any point in writing a long review: dragynfaerie said pretty much what I thought. The cast was outstanding. I think Ra Mi Ran is one of the best actors currently active - you could search out everything she has been in and not go wrong. Her comic turns in Please Come Back, Mister, made the show. She was heartbreaking in The Good Bad Mother, and Avengers Social Club is one I've re-watched a few times. So this show is good, but the ending is a bit meh. It deserved a few more episodes to wrap up everything neatly. Obviously I'm just writing this to rave about Ra Mi Ran.Was this review helpful to you?
Pleasant and underrated
This drama is populated by interesting characters, most of whom have well developed backstories. This is a nice contrast to the usual fare of superficial and boring people who are marched through a plot. They want better lives, make stupid decisions, get in trouble. But you can't help liking them, because really, don't we all want better lives? If you've ever bought a lottery ticket, you know what it's like to want to be a billionaire when you know there's no hope for it. So trouble comes, but everything works out well in te end. A simple drama with a good story, excellent character development, and a mostly happy ending. Really, what more could you want?Was this review helpful to you?
DoctorLawyer is another one of those dramas full of scheming, subterfuge, and unpleasant, self-centered characters whom you are bound to dislike. The plot is appropriately convoluted, with an ending that gives everyone their comeuppance. I actually dislike dramas like this, and half the time I end up rooting for the bad guys, because the good guys are so impossibly goody-two-shoes. I definitely did not care for Im Soo Hyang, who was still screening as Woori the Virgin when she showed up here as a lawyer - with not much difference of character. Well, I watched it to the end. If this is your cup of tea, you might enjoy it. But you should probably read someone else.s review, I obviously have a jaundiced view.
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A lovely and surprisingly heartwarming story
Two outstanding dramas in one season are more than I would have expected, but following on the heels of Navillera, we have Move to Heaven, an Unexpectedly charming and moving story of an autistic boy and his uncle. After watching Lee Je-hoon in Taxi Driver, I was pretty past my limit for violence and revenge, and if I had realized that he's playing the uncle, I would not have watch this. I"m so glad I was ignorant - he proved to be an actor of excellent range and made the transition from ex-convict to caring man elegantly and subtly. All of the cast was terrific. The writing was well paced, as was the direction. You'll shed a tear or two, and the stories nested within the main story elaborate the plot and the feelings. This is well worth watching.Was this review helpful to you?
The acting was outstanding, and in spite of focusing on the female leads, there was plenty of male eye candy to keep one happy. Overall, this was the most engaging drama I've seen in a long time. Bravo!
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I give up
I've been queuing this to watch every night for a couple of weeks, and I just can't make myself do it. It started strong, but by episode 10 there has been enough silly nonsense masquerading as a plot that I just cant manage more. I have been a sci-fi and time travel fan forever, but with very few exception (so few I can't think of any right now) K-drama just doesn't handle this stuff well. The best performance in the whole thing is Seong Dong Il, who always brings it. I think the writing went astray, and the direction got flatter and flatter. Well, take your chances, some people like it.Was this review helpful to you?
This drama hasn't heard of "Me,too!"
The problem here is a lack of taste and respect.. It's a good enough story, the acting is passable, but the entire premise is based on the female lead putting her hand on people's buttocks to read what they have seen in the past. So most of the episodes revolve around figuring out how o get her hand one someone's butt long enough to do a reading. Male, female, animal - any buttocks will do.Now think, for a minute, how offensive it would be if the lead who was reading people's butts was male and getting his hand on women. Pretty bad, right? Well, it's really no less offensive with the female lead. There are the bones of a good story here, but it ends up tasteless and it all seems forced.
I'm still watching it simply because I adore Lee Min Ki (I fell in love with him in Romantic Island) and I think he's a better actor than he gets credit for. I was sorry to see that he'd landed in this offensive piece. You may be more (or is it less? ) liberated than I am, just be warned that this isn't going to elevate the relationship between the sexes at all.
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Rarely has so much been promised, so little delivered.
I don't like Vampire stories, but Ok Taec Yeon is such a superior actor that he's always worth watching. PLus he had the backup of two of the funniest supporting actors, Go Gyu Pil and Yoon Byung Hee. There had to be some redeeming moments, vampires or not.And there were, at the beginning. I've never considered Oh Taec Yeon to be eye candy (just awesome talent), but as he ages and loses some of his teenage sort of gangliness, he's getting quite handsome. He certainly was a gorgeous vampire. FRom the start, though, I didn't care much for the female lead, Won Ji An. Her character was remote, cold, and vapid. I see this in a lot of K-kramas with strong male leads; the female lead is passive, retiring and uninteresting, and I always wonder what on earth the ML sees in her. I wonder if this is cultural: are submissive, fade-into-the-woodwork females necessary to show off the ML? Sure, there are exceptions, but it's the case more often than not. It really made the story unconvincing, especially since Yoon So Hee had a lot more spirit.
The story lost its way somewhere along, and the plot became convoluted while being badly explained and poorly written. The ending was dreadful, it dragged on far too long and was missing any resolution that could have been satisfying. Rather than ending, it became a lame set-up for a second season.
I do have to give a shout out to Baek Seo Hoo, who embodied the evilness and general gorgeousness that I like in a vampire.
Overall, a waste of a brilliant (mostly) cast. My rating is mostly for the cast, with one exception. As for the rest, give it a miss.
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Well, that was interesting.
I find it intriguing thatthis musical was based on a webtoon. How did they get the music into the webtoon? Probably didn't , and it was my feeling that the show would have been better without songs. I didn't care for them - they struck me as uninspired and disrupted the flow of the narrative, But it was an interesting experiment, and I give them points for trying something new, even if I personally didn't care for it.I was pretty bored by the first 3 episodes but decided to stick it out. It took and unexpected turn and got darker - and much improved - as it went on. It's a theme that I'm sure resonates strongly with Korean teens, and probably with all teens under serious academic pressure from their families. A lot of what the parents said seemed over the top, but perhaps that is really what Asian parents feel. It's not a stance that , as a very liberal American parent , can imagine doing to my child, who dropped out of high school with my blessings and was earning more at 20 than I ever earned as a school teacher. For me, the real takeaway was, have faith in your children. They can figure out their own lives better than we ca.n
As for this show, it's original and well done. And if you are not totally in love with Ji Chang-Wook by the end, I can't imagine what you have been thinking.
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This review may contain spoilers
There's Science Fiction and there's bad science
I didn't plan to watch this but couldn't resist the stellar cast. I'm especially fond of Kim Seong Oh, and he certainly delivered here. Overall, the acting was great, even Kim Rae Won, whom I haven't much liked since Gourmet.The show started off strong, and I found myself very engaged. The science was asinine, but as my English teacher always said, fiction requires the willing suspension of disbelief. So, I suspended and went along for the ride.
It was a good ride until about halfway through, and it was downhill from there. With the rise of the cult sub-plot, The action got increasingly pointless, devolving into too many fights culminating with a blast of electricity from the electric eel man. (Like I said, bad science - even the creation of Spiderman made more sense.) The possibly very sweet love story between the princlpals also made little sense- one minute she's hating him for killing her parents, the next she's having his baby. There were places where the author was trying to write Frankenstein, but the whole cult bit ruined it all. The ending was not satisfying on any level. Where there could have been more development on the humanization of Zi O, it was just thrown away.
An Nae Sang was a marvelous mad scientist but his part petered out at the end - it seemed that the author got tired of writing for him and liked the cult leader better. By the 9th episode I was ready for it to end. Overall, it didn't live up to its promise.
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The biggest problem was pacing. There was far too much time spent on persecuting the chicken restaurant owner, a nice guy although really a bit simple and too trusting. The plot finally expanded far into it, but as interesting plot lines developed, it was over. As a result, the whole thing wrapped up in a big hurry in the 12th episode, although to do the sub-plots justice it needed several more episodes. A typically rushed K-drama ending. The character development was simplistic and shallow. The plot had promise but the whole show felt like a throwaway that everyone had lost interest in by the end.
The music was really annoying. A couple of songs have been lifted from Boys before Flowers, and it was jarring to have them inserted here - one minute I was in a chicken restaurant, and the next I was back in time with images on Kim Hyun Joong and the rest of the cast, going to a snobby private school. I should have just watched BBF again!
The acting wasn't terrible, given the material they had to work with.
Don't waste your time here unless you are in the middle of a K-drama drought.
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Goes downhill fast
Started pretty good, but by the end, it felt like someone had a jar of suggestions for subplots and they were randomly digging through it to find something for the next episode. The interconnections between the characters became absurd, and they insisted on tying up every loose end in a hurry. Just like your shoelaces, badly tied means a lot of unraveling. By the last 10 episode I was pretty disgusted by it all.Mostly, the acting ranged from adequate to dreadful. The male lead (Ahn Jae Hyun) looked stoned and zombie like much of the series, but especially at the end. If I'd had to use that dialog, I'd get stoned, too. The second male lead (Jung Eui Jae) played it all very flat, going from nasty to depressing with not much in between - but if the transition in his personality wasn't well written, there really wasn't much he could do with it.
I don't usually pan something this badly, but this was a stinker. Watch something else or read a book.
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The stand-out drama of the season
I doubt that anything will come along this year that matches this drama for overall quality. I cried through so many of the early episodes. It was riveting. I won't bother to write a long synopsis, plenty of other people will do that. For me, the best part was seeing Ra Mi Ran (the mother) given such a great role. She's a fantastic actress, both in comedy and drama, but too often gets cast in the same old fish-wife type roles. She always delivers the best performances. She's hilarious in Come Back Mister as the overworked guardian of passage into the afterlife, and she's heart wrenching in this drama. She never misses. Make sure you watch this one!Was this review helpful to you?
Started strong, identity crisis midway
This was very promising at the beginning, with interesting characters, a good story line, and entertaining writing. But midway, when the ML decides he actually loves the FL, it becomes mawkishly saccharine and the writing loses its crispness in favor of predictable sentiment. The story them morphs into a "Me,Too" polemic, with a lot of added drama and conflict that seems tacked on as an afterthought in an attempt to spice it up. By the last episodes I found I no longer cared about the characters, with the FL's indecision and the ML's family issues. Seems popular to make the MLs weak and simpering characters these days, led around by the FLs and basically becoming so sympathetic and understanding that they are doormats. It's still not awful, but overall it seemed a bit of a mess to me. YMMV.Was this review helpful to you?
