This review may contain spoilers
It was very enjoyable
I just watched this movie after watching the drama and I have to say that I enjoyed this version a lot more.I don't know why, but the movie filled me with a sense of reality.
I'm Occidental so I don't know much of the daily life in China, but the general ambience , the internet place, the girl's dorms, the guy's dorm, the ML's office, the college as a whole felt more real, lived on maybe... Less sterile for sure than the drama, and that five minutes into the movie made me feel welcome.
The plot was good (taking into consideration they had to put 30 HS of drama story into 1.30 of film) there were changes that actually made sense.
The Main Leads. I loved Angelababy performance as WeiWei. She was so quirky and passionate, and cute and smart. And not to attack drama's WeiWei, but in her case there were curves so the girls teasing made sense. As I haven't read the novel, drama WeiWei seemed too bland sometimes after the first 15 episodes, not the actress fault, more the plot.
This WeiWei was more funny, more real, and more natural to me. Less stiff. And less prone to ask for permission and more into actually taking initiative sometimes. I liked that.
As much as I liked Yang Yang aesthetics, Jing Bo Ran's Xiao Nai was good too. I loved that he seemed more real not this idealised stoic ultra cool king-like guy that watched everything from his throne above mere mortals but more like a very intelligent, and slightly aloof young man pursuing his dream and dealing with all that comes with it (the bank loan was a nice touch) and his relationship with his friends is also more of equals in opposition to the drama version where he acted as boss rather than friend most of the time. A sad thing we didn't have much time to explore that.
The ML/FL relationship felt natural to me, he didn't stalked her and that was great. She was comfortable enough to talk with him in a normal way too after their first meeting, also she surprised him with nice gestures and her help. Drama version FL never seemed to act like he was HER boyfriend—I don't know how to express it; she was awesomed by him to the end, and that kinda put her in unequal ground. She helped him too but never with her skills and knowledge. I felt the drama wasted WeiWei skills and the movie actually used them
The only point I liked more about the drama (besides Yang Yang kissing and YeCheng being in the cast and with a cute story too) was the interaction of the guys with WeiWei (calling her Mrs Nai, being protective of her and their silly banter when in game mode.) The movie's pace rushed their entire relationship. A loss.
Most of her roomies were wasted (Seven Tan, love her) but in the drama only ErXi was given some depth so it wasn't much of a change either. I understand that it was for time issues.
I love the cosplay at the event and her friends mixing with some of the guys too.
All in all I enjoyed this movie a lot and plan on watching it again whenever I'm in the mood for something sweet and simple; sometimes I don't need convoluted plots and love dodecahedrons to enjoy a story, just something cute and easy.
Something exactly like this movie
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Lighthearted funny Love o2o movie but bad chemistry and SHORT ML
Life is too short for stressful drama. Why spend all that time watching and be stressed? Don’t our lives already provide enough of that?Summary of the series:
- Light hearted rom/com; movie had great flow (feels a bit rushed), no stress watching it
- cute romance
- simpatico characters
- ML is too SHORT to be believable, at least he was not dunking the basketball; lack of chemistry b/t ML and FL so lowers rating
- no villains really, no long struggles, calamity or miscommunications to cause more drama and stress
- they try to add more drama 2nd to the last episode hence I gave it a lower rating. Should have extending the ending to let the viewers enjoy they happiness more/ more gratifying.
- its a good story but can add 30mins to the film time to go deeper
very fun joyful, stressless series: recommended to watch for sure
If you are looking for gratuitous stress/drama, frequent miscommunications, insipid side stories, then this is not for you.
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This review may contain spoilers
First of all, I didn’t read the novel, but I like this movie better than the series (Love O2O). Why? Because the series feels too prolix for me. Indeed, the movie have a lot of scene-cut, conflict-cut and some different plot and character role, but in my opinion, it’s not cut the essence of the whole story. The whole story not different from the series, but it’s more comfort to watch. For me, at least ( ´ ω ` )They show us the college student life in dormitory. I’m especially love when there’s a blackout in the dormitory (o^▽^o) The brotherhood of Xiao Nai and his roommate indeed didn’t showed enough, because well, this is a movie not a series. The acceptance of Xiao Nai friends to Wei Wei is not clearly shown too. But truthfully, those didn’t quite disturb me.
The casts are doing great, I prefer the casts in this movie than the drama. Angelababy is better to portray Bei Wei Wei than Zheng Shuang. First, better in a physical appearance; because I personally think that Zheng Shuang is too skinny in the drama. Second, have a better ‘Wei Wei’ character; which she can be girly and tough at the same time. I personally think that Zheng Shuang act a little too girly and too sweet, but still something missing with it. Third, better acting at the kissing scene (* ^ ω ^) Well, maybe I can’t explain this well enough, but I feel that Angelababy act more into the character than Zheng Shuang in the kissing scene.
It’s not like I hate Zheng Shuang, she have a positive trait too, but I’ll wrote it down on Love O2O’s review, if I can finish it (because I hold watching that drama).
Now for the Male Lead, Jing Bo Ran. At first, I thought Yang Yang is better than him (refer to the look of the face LOL), but as the movie run, I made a conclusion that he is as good as Yang Yang. One minus point of the Male Lead for me is the white hair he used when playing Xiao Nai at the game. That didn’t fit him.
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If you want to watch the story of Love O2O in 2 hours watch this.
If you can spare the time watch the drama it's worth it!!This is basically Love O2O (drama) all mashed into a movie. When you watch a drama and fall in love with the actors and their way of acting it's a little hard to get used to others that try to remake the same exact story.
The one main difference that I notices was that in this movie there are a lot more physical fighting that was not shown in the original drama.
For the movie they seem to also get ride of the character named Zhen Shao Xiang who was also Zhen Shui Wuxiang they instead gave Zhen Shui Wuxiang to Cao Guang, which definitly gave a little change to the story line.
Coming to watch this after watching the drama my expectations were a bit high and they were not met. The drama is by far my favorite out of these two versions.
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Movie of the episodic series Love O2O without all the filler
Condensing 22.5 hours down to two hours, you're going to lose a lot. Missing was a lot of character development, but we also lost all the unnecessary silliness, extended game play, and multiple mean characters. I enjoyed the movie from this standpoint.The acting was pretty good, and the couple was cute together. I like it anytime a man sees a woman and is fascinated by her first.
There were a couple of sweet lines, a major swoony kiss, and a happy ending. It felt abrupt to me, but only because I had just finished watching the 30-episode series.
It's a cute movie to watch between more in-depth content.
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even jing boran couldn't completely pull us through this train wreck
I went into this with pretty low expectations (although I was a bit excited for the star studded cast: Jing Boran, Angelababy, Janice Wu, Seven Tan, Li Xian, and Li Qin all in one movie :0). Having watched the drama, I know how this story is: the plot offers nothing to interest viewers, the characters and relationships are horribly shallow, and the only thing going for it is its mindless, feel-good quality.I'll try to stay as objective as possible in terms of reviewing this movie having watched the drama and compare the drama and movie at the end of this review. That being said, it's very very clear this movie tried to fit too much into it's 1 h 42 min time frame. Whereas the drama had more time to flesh things out (whether they effectively fleshed them out is a different question), the movie lacked in plot, character, and relationship development. For instance, the Meng Yiran mean-girl-trope could've been completely sliced out of the plot. She literally showed up twice and added absolutely nothing to the story. Especially for those who haven't watched the drama, the movie offers a cramped, rushed, and incomplete interpretation of the story that jumps all over the place. As a result, that feel-good atmosphere you expect from a college romance is never created.
I was actually pleasantly surprised by Angelababy's Bei Weiwei. Her acting is definitely forced and very unnatural at times, and I would by no means call her a good actress, but she gave Bei Weiwei a bit of nerdy charm that I rather liked. Shockingly enough, her beauty was only mentioned once, and it was easy to think of her as a normal, passionately dorky college kid. As for Jing Boran as Xiao Nai, I can only say that Xiao Nai is fundamentally a terribly written character, a completely perfect, one-dimensional character with zero personality. Still, I appreciated the emotions Jing Boran managed to siphon out of Xiao Nai's lifeless character. Have you seen Jing Boran act like he's in love? Literal hearts coming out of this man's face.
As for Angelababy and Jing Boran together... it's safe to say they have very little chemistry. Part of it is definitely due to the time limit of the movie and the choice to show little of the development of their relationship. Perhaps if the running time were a little longer, they could've been a generic, mediocre cdramaland couple, but their chemistry is nowhere near strong enough to make it in a movie as short as this one. Bei Weiwei and Xiao Nai's relationship also made zero sense to me. By the end, I was still wondering what they like about each other, how they fell in love with each other, and why they were even together.
My biggest complaint has to be the editing. It was almost as if someone filmed a bunch of scenes and put them together using imovie or something. The transitions are a horrible fade out, and most of the time the scenes don't even connect in a way that makes sense. The movie jumps from scene to scene and expects the viewer to keep up, and most of the scenes are left hanging and unfinished. Definitely does not seem like a professional movie. The music as well was unnecessarily loud and drowned out the lines sometimes.
MOVIE VS DRAMA
Of course it's impossible not to compare the movie to the drama and vice versa. The first thing I noticed is that this movie fails to achieve the show Love O2O's laidback atmosphere, mostly because they tried to cram so much in such a little time frame. We also miss the only thing I really liked about the show: the relationship between Xiao Nai and his three hilarious friends. The side characters understandably have less screen time in the movie than in the drama, which put more pressure on the leads to carry the movie.
However, I will say I prefer Jing Boran's Xiao Nai over Yang Yang's Xiao Nai. In my opinion, Jing Boran displayed a wider range of expressions, emotions, and subtleties in acting. I also felt that movie Xiao Nai was more down-to-earth than drama Xiao Nai despite his "perfect" concept. The same actually goes for Angelababy as Bei Weiwei; I thought the movie's portrayal of the characters, although still shallow, was more relatable and more fun than the drama's. The biggest difference between movie Bei Weiwei and drama Bei Weiwei is that drama Bei Weiwei is built up to be a perfect girl: smart, beautiful, soft-spoken and gentle, while movie Bei Weiwei is more rough around the edges, a bit more loud and crazy. I also liked how the movie places Bei Weiwei at an equal level to Xiao Nai by having her a play a large role in the game development team, while in the drama, she is more of an intern in Xiao Nai's company.
Overall, I understand why the drama was better received than the movie, and would probably recommend watching the drama first. However, as far as characterization goes, I would say the movie did a better job than the show.
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Light-hearted but missing plot
I had watched the drama before this and of course, I expected the movie to cut a lot out simply due to time constraints. Because of that, however, I felt like we ended up with a mediocre movie. It was light-hearted and we still got a really warm and mature relationship between the two leads, but in terms of plot and character development, this version was lacking.Essentially, I felt like nothing really happened in this movie. I'm not sure what the plot for this movie was and what conflicts there really were; because there was no big conflict, I also didn't really see our characters grow or change or have to face any obstacles.
I liked the tidbits of bromance and sismance between the cast, but it's also true that we weren't able to see much of it and everyone was very cookie-cutter.
I did like the visual effects however, though the actual gaming didn't take up a big part of the movie either (understandably).
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✒⌨ 2D Love °5.9° °good° ?%?
Gamers don't need a dating website because they can make good matches while gaming. Our protags are fans of the RPG (role playing game) Chinese Ghost Story/CGS. FL, Wei Wei, even has an in-game spouse - until she gets dumped. She won't be in the dumps for long, though: Her white knight is in the wings.Computers don't just facilitate hook-ups; they make identity theft pretty easy, too. While Er Xi may not have stolen Wei Wei's ID, she did borrow Wei Wei's CGS game character, which leads /Wei Wei's/ crush to pursue /Er Xi/ in the game, thinking he's hanging out, virtually, with Wei Wei. It also leads men at Er Xi's summer internship to believe that SHE'S the top female CGS player. Er Xi, unawares, is getting all kinds of attention in the name of Bei Wei Wei, and Bei Wei Wei wouldn't have it any other way-way-way.
That's the same paragraph I used for the show review because, in curious fashion, 2016 saw a show and a film released that were based on the same story. I watched the show first and find myself unable to assess this film without comparing. It feels like a completely different story in many ways, thankfully. But the core programming is identical:
Xiao Nai is the school ‘s supreme catch. Not only is he finishing up school, but he's designing a new game with his buddies. They are marketing it to companies and will run into all kinds of sleaze👾 in the business world. He's also a serious gamer and CGS is his 2nd home. He witnesses the top female player being game-divorced and decides it might be nice to pick her up as a game-wife. He's also glimpsed Wei Wei playing CGS at an internet cafe 😍. He's making 2D and 3D moves on her. Wei Wei is “The Belle of the Computer department,“ but her paths haven't crossed much with Xiao Nai ~ she /thinks/. She's been hanging with him on the CGS servers, she just doesn't know who her game spouse is IRL/in-real-life. In the meantime, Er Xi uses Wei Wei's alternate ID to play the game and ends up being mistaken for the top female player in CGS. This brings her into virtual contact with a guy chasing Wei Wei IRL. He thinks he's flirting with his crush and Er Xi believes she's developing a new virtual relationship that could become a real world fling. One of them is more wrong than HE would guess and the other is so wrong, but so right.
That's the setup. They are meeting in the game and building impressions in their imagination. Next, they will face and deal with the IRL implications.
Both the show and movie are watchable and enjoyable for romance fans. I don't think either feature does anything but toss lite snacks to the romance fan base. They aren't going to please any other watching group. So, you romantics out there, this is worth watching for the first kiss; it's swoony. The romance is mutual. Xiao Nai is “The Man”. He only plays for keeps.
I know my rating makes it seem like I didn't like the film. I did - it's definitely over the line of demarcation. It has some great moments along with its corresponding problems. Until recently, China consistently put out (arguably) watchable, relaxation-inducing, but mindless drivel under the guise of modern-day features, while at the same time they cranked out all-world fantasy and historical pieces. I have my theories about this… China's modern day features have been cluttered up with wooden acting, inane dialogue, and lazy plotlines. Things started changing noticeably around 2018. Now, there's many modern-day Chinese features I have been able to watch and not just enjoy, but LOVE - without wincing in pain at all. Coincidentally, many characters in these new-and-improved contemporary Chinese works will mention watching Kdramas. It's like China got a memo. They've responded well.
As for a comparison, the film is 100 minutes and the show is nearly 1400 minutes. The show should be better. The movie has more natural looking people and a more natural feel when it comes to interactions between the characters. It's so loose and free feeling, compared to most Chinese modern-day features (2016 & earlier), that I double checked to make sure it wasn't a Taiwanese film. Because of that, the film feels differently from the show, even with some of the same scenes. From the start, the characters feel real; this movie is part of the positive jump forward. There are minor pacing issues, though, where things almost drag.
The FL isn't awful in the show, but she's just better in the film, being feisty and active in the relationship. She isn't shy. She becomes part of the team, not a piece of fluff on the side. It makes more sense how the film has Wei Wei actively involved with the company and making the game. She is a computer major, afterall. In the show she acts more like a liberal arts major and soon-to-be 50’s housewife. One of the show's deficiencies is how Wei Wei remains too demure. A confident and capable Wei Wei would have been a welcomed sight.
Er Xi in the show is said to be homely, when she's definitely north of an 8. She's one of the show's assets. I rolled my eyes every time they denigrated her character's looks. (The show focuses on looks too much. It gets wearisome). Show Er Xi could play Tinkerbell, she's so cute. Movie Er Xi is perky and would qualify as less than a 7 based on looks alone, though the actress beams an uplifting carefree air. I'm only commenting on looks because it's a theme in the story - perhaps the main theme. The truth is that there are very few ugly people, and confidence is the sexiest thing. The rest of the movie-friends get alot less play due to the 1300 minute differential. They didn't utilize the friends well in the show, either.
As the credits start to roll we hear about one of the guys falling in love with a female game character who turns out to be a man. It's a bit that got alot of screen time in the show and was handled particularly well, except for the wrap-up.
Overall, the flick has higher highs and lower lows than the show. The characters are solid and there's great moments. It is quick & abbreviated, with light drama that is resolved too easily. Just keep that in mind.
QUOTE📢
If you go outside the wall an inch, I'll move the wall an inch. If you go outside a foot I'll move it ten feet.
〰🖍 IMHO
📣5.5 📝4 🎭7 💓6 🦋7.6 🌞5 🎨7⚡5 🎵/🔊6.5 😅2 😭2 😱0 😯2 😖0 🤔1 💤2.5 🔚6
Age - there's nothing objectionable and nothing about which to make an age caution. As soon as kids can keep up with the subtitles they are good-to-go with 0-2-0.
Re-📺? Doubtful
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The visuals are stunning, especially during the scenes set in the game’s universe. The action is dynamic, and the virtual world is beautifully crafted—it makes you want to step right into the adventure. It’s a lighthearted, fun film with a positive message about the importance of communication and trust in a relationship.
The chemistry between the leads is undeniable, and the way their lives intertwine in both the real and virtual worlds is genuinely captivating. The film captures the essence of finding love and connection in the most unexpected places.
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