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Pretty but ordinary
There has only been a handfull of korean dramas which surprised and amazed me with their cinematography: Search:WWW, Into The Ring, Call It Love and this one.Unfortunately that is the only thing this drama has going for it. The rest is just a repetitive, subpar storytelling using the usual high school topics: bullying, suicide, gossip, internet. Here they added prostitution, kidnapping and corrupt politicians. And to top it all there are two half hearted romances. All of this has been crammed into eight 30minutes extremely long episodes. Each episode felt like it was two hours long!
The acting was ok though I am still trying to figure out why the main lead had to have such a heavy accent. I suppose that it was to show he lives in another region but he is the only character in this drama with such a heavy, singsong, uncomfortable to listen to local accent. His father does sometimes but that's it. No one else speaks with this accent so, why does he need to? The other main character, was also a stereotypical mountain of a person, taciturn and menacing in appearance (I mean, don't start me on that upside down triangle haircut!). I liked how their bromance made them each personally grow.
The main characters were rather realistic, all too human with very ordinary, normal reactions faced with extraordinary menace (bullying, threats, violence, blackmailing). They are not heroes so they are easy to identify with!
The rest of the characters were very sketchy, superficial and often clichés: the unsatisfied teacher, school bully in a colourful jacket (he has to be seen to be different!), nerdy insecure friends (they were quite interesting: the three such characters dealt with their insecurities differently. We were shown what should and what should not be done in such cases!), one pair of loving parents (the other teens seem to be orphans: we never see their parents!) and of course the bad guy or to be precise the bad woman, who was again such a cliché.
The music was fine: heavy rock which suited the topic of the drama perfectly. There were a couple of funny scenes usually involving the MC's best friend (hypnosis and candles!).
So why am I rating this so high? Because of the cinematography. That is the only feature that actually made me finish this drama!
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Deceiving looks
Despite being a short one, they wasted so much time on other matters instead of the main objective that's the "dead girl". The investigation/mystery became a side plot and this ended up being a short teen romance drama. Hardly okay!Was this review helpful to you?
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is this being watched
This drama kind of hooked me to watch the entire series in one go because I am a big fan of choyihyun I have been watching every drama of her this is kind booring and sometimes fun too watch you can watch this in a single go by viewing in 2x speed this is nothing but why the 2nd ml girlfriend died this just revolves around that who they are connected to her death who is the real culprit and the reason she died, her friend and boyfriend starts solving this case and ends up finding totally it's have a happy endingWas this review helpful to you?
How To Buy a Friend
- Liked the storyline.- Music made me scared.. It was memorable, though!
- Some comedic value.
- Acting was very well done.
- Wanted to see more of Don-hyuk and Seo-jung.
- The only music I really remember is that one scary tune.
- After a while, you'd want to rewatch it.
- Quite different from other school themed k-dramas.
- There are some heavier parts and some lighter parts as well.
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linguistic majors will be soooo happy
"you can't let the things you love destroy you"aspects i enjoyed:
- the POETRY of it all. i instantly was hooked by the premise, "everything started with a poem." as an english major i loved the language used, i loved that chanhong found the artistic skill and passion to write, that was most definitely my favorite character development (same with donhyuk just on a lesser scale). i think it was such a unique linguistic take to the crime kdrama by literally analyzing language patterns to find out who was behind everything
- another huge thing that stood out: CINEMATOGRAPHY... WOW! i wish i could insert some of my favorite stills from this show, but the moments that stick out are from the first episode. Even looking at the lighting differences from the school / chanhongs parents house / outside.... it all looks so pretty and put together. Good job team.
- Chanhong hehehehheheheh. My creature.
- i thnk the relationship between the ML and FL happened naturally and nicely
- funny when it needed to be
- ending wrapped everything up
- chanhong / donhyuk friendship, i think it's impressive that they were able to characterize donhyuk like that in 8 episodes
- overall, production quality, storytelling, acting, OST, everything needed to wrap up a kdrama in a nice bow is present and i think with webtoon adaptations and "mini dramas" that can be harder to accomplish
aspects i did not enjoy:
- i did watch this over the course of a week, but when donhyuk eventually found THE bad people (including daeyoung) under that bridge with the fire IDK i was a bit confused at the wrapping up of the crime itself
- mira / kyungpo relationship was wayyyy too forced lmao
- english trans of the title dsfjkfdshdsfk like i guess friendship contract is worse and makes it sounds "fluffier"?
- honestly everything else as far as the crime plot being confused probably could have been fixed if the drama was longer so yeah i don't have a lot to complain about
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Perfect portrayal of high school drama
I really don’t know to express how much I liked this drama. I appreciated that it wasn’t dragged out and that it was mainly kept to the students dealing with each other with very little interference.I liked how the friendship contract turned the five students into real friends. The boyfriend/girlfriend relationship was so sweet and innocent.
I enjoyed watching them joke around with each other. Saddened by those who felt lost out in which it drove them to extreme measures because they felt left out. Kindness in the end won out.
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Es una historia interesante, con una bonita fotografía. Debo decir que no era lo que esperaba ya que es vendida en como se decide hacer un contrato entre dos chicos por beneficio mutuo, pero no ese ese tipo de historia. Aunque no nos engañan del todo y si se puede decir que hay un tipo de contrato, la historia gira en torno a otra cosa.
En algunas ocaciones llega hacer graciosa, la historia tiene un buen hilo argumental para ser tan corta. Aunque no dejo de pensar que quedan algunas cosas abiertas, tiene un buen cierre a lo que ocurre, con esto quiero decir que no es de un final abierto. Los personajes como tal están bien construidos y se conoce de ello lo necesario para la historia. Queda un poco flojo algunas cosas en si pero no es de gran importancia.
Es muy disfrutable para verlo, ademas que es refrescante y rápida de ver. Es el tipo de dorama que uno busca en ocaciones cuando no sabe que ver.
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