Booooring
I am at episode 5 out of the total 24 and the action and the drama still failed to happen. Poker faced actors due to lack of screenwriting material. An absolute pain to watch. As always, I put the blame on the writers and directors and producers. When the first are lacking in their professional output, what could the poor actors do?Was this review helpful to you?
Great all over
Superb acting, wonderful music, great story.At one point I started wondering if this was a depiction of past times, or a commentary on current business practices and morals (or lack there of).
Or simply proof that there really is nothing new under the sun.
Not when it comes to human nature.
Was this review helpful to you?
Stunning
An absolute gem, with superb acting, haunting music, and just about great everything else.No problem binging on 70 episodes, each and every one of them packed with action.
There are layers and layers inside the story, with the deepest one taking on the profound question of the nature of absolute power, and what that does to people.
The ending, which upset many commentators, I found to be very fitting: a basically dark story had to have a dark ending.
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
Too long for its own good
This is a 32 episode story, continued with another 24 episode long sequel, under a changed title: In the Name of the Blossom.Either way, it was too, too long.
The story did not need a total of 56 boooooring episodes to be told.
Half of its length was due to characters reminiscent of past events. A story that is self referencing to the point of nausea it's too painful to watch.
ML and FL forced to forever smile at each other it was another source of pain.
Was this review helpful to you?
The Long Struggle To Watch
First off: good acting, in spite of what the scriptwriter and director provided.Still, the female lead was not so engaging in her facial expressions, and with disturbingly white capped teeth.
Chemistry of the lead couple also lacking.
The first 10 or 15 episodes it was not so much for two female characters being "lost in the world", as it was for the two male characters searching for them in an endless succession of scenes showing them riding and taking turns on empty wodded roads. They looked like idiots, and so felt I for still sticking to see the end of it.
Also, if one owns the fact that this story was inspired by a comics book story to the point of replacing battle scenes or large scale scenes with comics book style renditions, then why, oh why, the same one provides so called battle scenes with just two dozen extras. Again, not only it looks stupid and cheap, but also makes the one watching the series look stupid.
And the long, loooong scenes of people saying goodbye or saying hello. What's up with that so much irrelevant stuff on screen?
And the many instances of susspension of judgment, not of disbelief...
Just one case in point: closer to the end, one male character sets out to kill the one who killed the woman he loved, albeit in an unrequited love.
Anyway, a few frames down the road, he rides along the guy he wanted to execute. What happened? Who forgot who this guy was and what he was bent on doing?
What can I say?
A lot. Only that it will turn into a laundry list of "don'ts".
A looooong laundry list.
Was this review helpful to you?
Perfection
I am done seeing all 30 episodes and I have to praise its absolute perfection. Never had I imagined that I would sit at the edge of my seat to watch a ship pass through a channel in slow motion, as it happened in episode 29. All the production team was superb, and I was very glad to recognize actors Yu He Wei (here policeman Shi Qiang) and Edward Zhang (here scientist Wang Miao), whom I have seen before.I first saw both of them in two outstanding epic movies dealing with Chinese history.
I saw Yu Hu Wei as Liu Bei, in the 2010 masterpiece production of "Three Kingdoms", and Edward Zhang, as Ying Zheng or the first emperor of all China, in the 2020 production of "Qin Dinasty Epic".
So, it is quite a leap from history renditions to the SciFi genre, but boy, what a leap both actors have made! Cudos!
Was this review helpful to you?
Loved it!
I will not embarass myself with writing praise after praise after prasie. But they, all of them, the creators of this work deserve it.It was a joy to watch, fast paced, entertaining, consistent, with beautiful acting and superb cinematography. A joy to watch all around. So, give it a try, for I will not give you the spoilers.
Was this review helpful to you?
An absolute gem!
Everyting is perfect in this series. On top of coherent story line, fast paced, action pacted, superb cinematography and great dark mood and overall aesthetics, one has the benefit, once again, to watch the Chinese actor at work. Actor, like in singular, like in type of actor. I am in awe seeing again and again, in this series and in others I watched online, how Chinese actors make true of the saying "there are no small parts; only actors". Indeed. no small parts and no small actors here ... Cudos!Was this review helpful to you?
So well done, that it pains to watch
This drama it is so well done on all levels, the performance of all professionals it is so outstanding, that the end result for me was that I could take it in only in small doses. No binge watching for me. This is something to be savoured. But also something to be weary of: the subject matter is dark and its rendering touches one deeply. It reminded me my first watching of Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of "The Shining", with Jack Nicholson in the leading role. I was literally hiding behind the door frame and looked at the TV with one eye only, ready to take refuge behind the wall. I am a grown up now, no hiding behind walls for me. Just pretending to have chores to do, so that I can take in, in small doses, this beautifully crafted Chinese series. Also, among the great cast all around, it was great for me to recognize actress Liu Lin whom I first spotted in a support role in "The Story of Minglan" series, of 2018. There, she and many other so called support role actors, delivered to the hilt, to the point that there were more "main role" performances than the casting presumed to be.Was this review helpful to you?
Too painful to watch
As always, I commend the great acting of all Chinese actors. No matter what I watch they never fail to deliver.But this is the end of my praise.
I picked this title because of the director. I had watched his 2018 direction of "The Story of Minglan", and I was in awe: what a story, what great development of story line and characters, what drama upon drama and next to another drama. It was rich, rounded, shocking, enchanting and most of all entertaining, with actors that delivered to the tilt, turning even support roles in rich characters to remember. I re watched that series two times more, and it never failed to enchant me, though I knew or even more so since I knew the story.
And here I am at episode 9 of this "Serenade to Joy" and ready to quit it.
I have no words for how underwhelming this work is.
It took eight episodes to solve a so called conflict, which was not even fully developed or exploited as a conflict, between son, birth mother and foster mother. The dialogue was lame, the action was lame. No drive whatsoever.
And while I cherish the fact that people bother to provide us, outsiders, with English subtitles, I have to stand by one Chinese reviewer who protested for having the English subtitles covering the Chinese characters. It was a first for me too. All other Chinese dramas I watched had the two languages clearly visible separately.
I believe that our convenience, of being able to read in English, should not be won at the expense of the Chinese not being able to read in Chinese.
Regarding translation, I also have to point out that it was cumbersome, too pedanting in willing to transfer to English all of the subtleties of the Chinese dialogues. Translating for movies is different than translating for a book: one has to drop complexity of language and meaning to facilitate understanding. Soooo many times I had to stop the video and go back a few frames in order to read the many lines, in a not so fluent English. Sometimes even that action did not further my understanding of the translation.
Too bad. A lot of good people put a lot of good work into all of this, and yet the result is heartbreaking.
Was this review helpful to you?
The strangest tale was that the love interest was dropped out down the line
I am at episode 13 and seriously considering to stop watching it. The first thing which draw my attention for being quite off was the fact that the love interest presented in the first five or six episodes was completely forgotten by writers, actors and directors in the next five episodes. Two young people, who were presumably in love with each other while events and people kept them appart, are as stiff as wood when events bring them together, sharing meals, rooms, adventures. No emotion, no furtive glanses, no pauses full of yearning. Nothing. It did not have to be lines, or hugs or kisses. But it had to be something there, that the actors and director could have put into it, if the writers completely forgot what they wrote in the beginning. Well, it was not. The only thing going for the series was the detective stories. And the fun the actor playing the older detective put into his character. Otherwise, no character development, overall, and the series walks the thin line which lies between skematic and bare naked and lacking.Was this review helpful to you?
