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Hotel del Luna korean drama review
Completed
Hotel del Luna
68 people found this review helpful
by Kate
Sep 2, 2019
16 of 16 episodes seen
Completed 7
Overall 6.5
Story 6.0
Acting/Cast 8.0
Music 7.0
Rewatch Value 1.0
This review may contain spoilers
I am not going to lie, I felt extremely frustrated while watching this drama. It had amazing potential, but close to nothing worked out. The beauty - amazing cinematography and styling of our main character, and the beast - the writing.

There honestly is not much to say about the characters, since the only one that had true depth was Man Wol. She was the centre of the drama and IU did an amazing job representing her development and gradual change. Chang Sung could have worked way better if it wasn't for Chung Myung. All the rest of the characters we simply did not spend enough time with, to truly care about. I must say, Sanchez was my favorite and he was the breath of fresh air.

Kim Seon Bi/Choi Seo Hee/Ji Hyun Joong aka when writers do not care.
Out of all their stories, only Seo Hee's had some depth to it. Kim Seon Bin's story was extremely random, there were close to no hints about his previous life so I did not even care to speculate what happened to him. Hyun Joong's past life story had the least sense. How did his sister not recognize that the guy taking care of her was not her brother. How did his family not ask any questions, why did they recognize her and not him? You could say it was a war so they did not see him for a long time, but the same would apply to the sister. Hong sisters did not care enough about those characters to spend time to truly explain and develop their stories. They had the material for a good 8 episodes of Man Wol's side and had to fill the rest with random storylines. I could not feel emotional about them all leaving at the end, because all I could think about was: None of it makes any sense.

I also believe it would be better to start sending away the characters around episode 10-12, and not just have them all gone in the last 2 episodes. We could slowly see how Man Wol is realizing all the people she loves and cares about are gone and moving on to the afterlife. How the ones that stay behind struggle with the loss. We would see her being more concerned about how will Chan Sung deal in the future when she is gone. Them gradually leaving would have more impact on both the characters and the storyline.

Chan Sung/Chung Myung aka the failed romance
While I enjoyed Chan Sung at the beginning, the moment we got more scenes with Chung Myung and the past story developed into something interesting, I could not focus on the present. Chan Sung was simply a boring character that was there only for Man Wol's story to develop and he had nothing going on for himself. When we met another male character that had a past romantic relationship with Man Wol, but also was its own character, it was easy to forget our male lead. At the end of the day I wished for more flashbacks and less present plot. And I would rather have them as friends than as romantic partners.

Kim Yoo Na aka no one truly cares about anything
While I enjoyed Yoo Na, I do believe they should have made her a more tragic character. Yet again, there was no depth to the story. Show me how much she struggles to fit in that new house, how she misses her old friends and family and how she is tired of pretending to be someone else.

All the hotel cases aka when you try too hard to please the viewers
I did not truly like any of the random hotel cases, but I hated some more than others. The most random one with the humans having sex in the hotel room to have some superior child in the future. I was truly confused why this plotline was in the drama.
There were too many cases, so at the end, none of them was developed or complex. They tried to fit any genre (horror, crime, romance, melo, etc.) into the drama, just to make sure all viewers can find something they may like.

Disney ending aka when you are afraid to commit to the tragedy
None of the characters involved in the drama had a truly tragic ending. Which was extremely unrealistic. It could be easily fixed. Make Yoona too late to say goodbye to Hyun Joong. After Seo Hee goes to the bridge, cut to the mother registering the baby with the father's surname because of the grandparents. Make the book about Seon Bi flop. I would even like for Chung Myung to vanish because he used all his energy looking after Man Wol. The Song sisters wanted to show us how sad, tragic, and emotional the feeling of loss is, but they did not want to show the truly ugly side of it. Because of that, the ending felt bland.

Overall, during the whole watch, there was literally (and I truly mean it) only one time when I thought "wow, this is a good writing, I finally feel the playoff" and it was with how they used the Coffee Writer Dude. They spent just enough time for us to be curious about him and wonder what will happen to him, when he will go to the afterlife.

At the end, Hong Sisters had an amazing idea, about an amazing character, and no idea what to do with the rest. Trying to fit too many stories of too many characters made this drama a... mess.
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