1
9
1
A Path to Somewhere and Nowhere at the Same Time
I’m conflicted about this movie/series. I think the problems I have with it are not as a result of flaws in the film but rather a flaw in the basic concept and what they were given to begin with. How do you end a prequel happily when the sequel starts sadly? That is the problem they were handed.We know from Unintentional Love Story that they have a history in which there was confusion on Ho Tae side over his feelings and there was never a romantic relationship between them. They have an adversarial relationship, on the surface, at the beginning of the series and grow closer with an implied ending of them getting together. This is what leads to the problem of what you do with the prequel. They mentioned basic plot points but you’re dealing with a case of they parted for two years and ever since they have met again, they have not had a good relationship. So, you want to tell a story with a happy ending, but you essentially need to retcon the original story in order to obtain that.
Also, the plot felt like it dragged on. I watched around 2 episodes at a time due to the fact that it felt like we were going around in circles or just repeating the same plot points over and over again. It’s very weird in my head because it felt like there was a development in their relationship, but it felt like we kept stuttering to get there and it felt both like we got somewhere and also that we got nowhere. Was it maybe the repetition of Ho Tae’s actions towards Dong Hee. The repetitive promises he gave didn’t really change much. They were supposed to show forward change, and it just felt like we were going back to the last time this happened and were doomed to relive similar events again. Maybe it would have been different if I had seen it as a film as opposed to separate episodes, it may have flowed better that way but that’s not what was available to me.
It kind of feels like we got both somewhere and nowhere and that I think is the fault of the original story because in that story, we started just after nowhere, so this story had to end at nowhere. The ending felt rushed and empty and that is due to the limitations of the beginning of the original. I also believe that this was a very one-sided story.
In my opinion, Ho Tae is the main character and Dong Hee felt very much cast to the side. It felt like we were watching the development of Ho Tae’s feelings and his story and how Dong Hee fit into that with only a sprinkle of plot development for Dong Hee but only how it impacted him in relation to Ho Tae. That’s just the feeling I got.
Overall, I didn’t dislike it, but I’m sitting with a lot of opposing feelings.
(I already posted this review on the movie page but decided to post it here to so people can see it)
Was this review helpful to you?
Disconnected
This review was difficult to write because I came away from this movie confused and unsure of how to put my feelings into words. I’ve come up with a starting point which is that the movie felt flat. The story plateaued the entire time. There were no ups and downs. There were no highs and lows. There wasn’t really a climax, a low point, and a satisfying resolution that felt earned. I knew what the result would be at the end but when that result came to be, it felt like it wasn’t deserved or rather, it felt empty, it felt hollow.The characters and their relationship:
I felt like on a conscious level, in my brain, I knew the characters liked each other because I was told that. I could see some of it manifest in their behavior but it felt more like I was being told something was true when I couldn’t really feel it. There was a disconnect between what I knew and what I felt. This was the biggest point I had trouble putting into words. The plot made sense and the ending made sense for the characters and was expected and yet it felt like it came out of nowhere and yet everywhere at the same time. Maybe there was a lack of chemistry between the actors but I’m not so sure that was the problem. It was like there was a disconnect between the narrative script and the movie we watched. It’s strange because they should be one and the same and yet they weren’t.
The characters themselves:
I think the characters felt stuck at 14 years old because that is where we left them at the end of the drama. It felt like because we just skipped 10 years and didn’t see them grow within that time, we weren’t able to see evolution. Their fix for this was just to keep the characters stagnant and the same as they were when they were 14. They didn’t feel like 24 year old people, they felt like 14 year olds disguised as adults. It was strange and threw me off. I know why they did that. They also needed to make sure we could associate them with their younger selves but it just felt off. They felt like giant versions of their middle school selves instead of their middle school selves who have aged 10 years.
Overall, it felt like it was trying to be heartfelt, and yet it just felt empty to me. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it and watched the entire thing but I think it was because I kept waiting for that moment where something big happens, then something goes wrong, and then there’s a resolution. But nothing ever goes wrong, nothing really happens much. There are plot points and yet the plot feels hollow.
Give it a watch but don’t expect much.
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
Soulless story with a ridiculous plan
I’m quite disappointed in this movie to the point where I didn’t even finish it. The plot, or rather the plan the ML has is so dumb that I couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough for it. Also, the FL was okay with his plan which is mind blowing in how dumb it is.SPOILERS!
His plan is basically to fake being a piano player to trick the FL, a pianist who is blind, to fall in love with him I guess. He says it’s to make her happy but he could have gotten someone to just play the piano for her and not pretend it’s him and manipulate this vulnerable woman who he thinks won’t be able to tell that it’s not him because she is blind. Anyways, he is basically broke but to go through with this ridiculous and idiotic plan with a payoff that I’m not sure he even knows what it is, he gets a night job and is barely sleeping basically breaking himself so he can afford to pay this guy to play the piano and pretend to be him. Dude, what the hell man?! How is this something that makes even remote sense.
Also, the direction the actor received was to act like a zombie. He walks around with this blank look on his face, hunched posture, really weird gait. I know it’s supposed to look like he’s given up on life but it’s not executed well.
Then we find out that the FL knew that it wasn’t him the entire time and she was just okay with this person lying to her, cool, so that’s dumb.
It also felt quite soulless for some reason. The whole plot is supposed to be so moving but it just felt empty to me. Maybe it was the direction the actors were given, maybe it was the stupidity of the plan the ML had, I don’t know. It just felt lacking.
I just don’t get it. I watched the majority of this movie (before I dropped it) in bursts. I couldn’t even watch it for too long before getting too annoyed and bored to continue. I had so much hope for this movie and I’m sad to say it was squandered.
Was this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
One Terrible Casting and One Missing Story
The decision to cast the actor who plays Chiaki almost singlehandedly brought the entire show down. That and a missing love story. And no, I’m not exaggerating. Let me explain.Acting
He can’t act. He has two faces he uses. He can smile which appears a handful of times but the other, much more prominent face, the one you will see him wearing for 97% of this show is one that makes him look like he’s about to throw up or be sick. For every emotion he will have this same face. He’s upset, he looks like he’s sick. He’s frustrated, the same. He’s taken aback, the same. He’s nervous, the same. He’s being flirted with, the same. It doesn’t matter what emotion he is supposed to be portraying, the actor will keep the same facial expression that makes him look constantly ill. I cannot understand or relate to a character when they only have one facial expression. It just made me so annoyed with the character because I was yelling at the screen, “please show some form of emotion.” It made every scene with him frustrating because I knew that no matter what happened, he would react the same way. I genuinely cannot put into words how much this ruined the show for me. It stripped Chiaki of all character traits because he looked the same no matter what he was doing, no matter what he was feeling, no matter what he was thinking. There was no dimension to his character not due to lack of trying from the writers but due to a failure in the acting direction. He became a blank piece of cardboard who looks ill all the time.
Chemistry
Due to the acting choices of Chiaki mentioned above, the chemistry is nonexistent from his side. I will come back to this chemistry thing and their relationship but there was no chemistry between the actors.
Why does AE like Chiaki?
As I listened to AE’s closing speech and confession, I sat there wondering who he was talking about. He described this character who is supposedly Chiaki but was not who I had been watching. This could be due to the acting direction failure and terrible execution in that regard when it comes to Chiaki as all I never ever saw those characteristics AE described in Chiaki. I sat there for a lot of the show thinking to myself, “Why does AE like this guy? What does he offer AE? Why is he attracted to this boring and uninteresting person?” I’m confused as to why in the world AE likes Chiaki. From the characteristics he described I can maybe see him liking that character but there is nothing appealing about the Chaiki I saw on screen. If I cannot understand the character’s draw to their love interest, whether I think they would be good together or not, then you have failed as a love story.
Where is the story part of the “love story?”
I’m gonna be honest, when I was watching AE confess to Chiaki, I learned things about the evolution of their relationship that I didn’t get from watching the damn show. I did not ever see either one of them fall in love. I was honestly taken aback when AE is with his stylist and he claims to be in love. I was shocked because what do you mean you’re in love? I genuinely did not see a transition from whatever feeling he had toward Chiaki to begin with into this love. While watching it I forgot that he had different intentions to begin with because we were never shown him falling in love, they just said he loves him and so my brain corrected their errors and made me think he always liked him. Chiaki and his love for Enaga. What love? He dodges AE’s kiss because he thinks about Enaga and I’m sitting there like, “He made your heart flutter once, that’s all. Do not lie to me and say you’re in love with him!” Chiaki is OBSESSED with AE, okay, he would not dodge that kiss because he wouldn’t even be in that situation if he gave a damn about Enaga in a romantic sense. If he truly liked Enaga, he wouldn’t be trying to run after and accost AE in the street and then have him pierce his belly button (why did he have the tools on hand to do that btw?) and get all close with AE physically there and say those weird things about wanting a reminder of AE on him. No matter how hard you try to convince me, you can’t. Chiaki never saw Enaga as anything other than a friend and work partner. You can’t tell me he fell in love with Enaga at the end of the show and have me believe you when you showed no such thing. For both of these characters there was no falling in love, they just suddenly were in love. AE’s was documented more and we knew about it for a lot longer but Chiaki was just thrown in our face with a 2 second flash back and that was what they considered sufficient.
Their relationship(s)
I feel like the development in both of the versions of their relationships were wildly unbalanced. We were told all about how he felt about AE, the ups, the downs, the obsession, (yes, told, not shown because the acting was a problem) and with Enaga we were shown nothing. By that I mean that the weight put on Chiaki’s relationship with AE was far larger than that put on his relationship with Enaga. Chiaki never told us how he felt about Enaga beyond, “We’re friends and having friends is fun.” Chiaki says he fell in love with Enaga and not AE but no, I don’t believe you. You didn’t give him a second thought when you ran after AE in the rain, okay? You never gave him a second thought, especially not romantically, as far as the narrative is concerned. They focused on the wrong relationship is what I’m getting at.
Final thoughts
I walked away from this having liked the first few episodes until I sat down and realized what I liked was only the end of episode 2 when AE is on that balcony because he looked cool there. So, yeah, a failure of a story. I’m completely ignoring how the power imbalance between them is ridiculously large and they shouldn’t be in a relationship.
Was this review helpful to you?
A Path to Somewhere and Nowhere at the Same Time
I’m conflicted about this movie/series. I think the problems I have with it are not as a result of flaws in the film but rather a flaw in the basic concept and what they were given to begin with. How do you end a prequel happily when the sequel starts sadly? That is the problem they were handed.We know from Unintentional Love Story that they have a history in which there was confusion on Ho Tae side over his feelings and there was never a romantic relationship between them. They have an adversarial relationship, on the surface, at the beginning of the series and grow closer with an implied ending of them getting together. This is what leads to the problem of what you do with the prequel. They mentioned basic plot points but you’re dealing with a case of they parted for two years and ever since they have met again, they have not had a good relationship. So, you want to tell a story with a happy ending, but you essentially need to retcon the original story in order to obtain that.
Also, the plot felt like it dragged on. I watched around 2 episodes at a time due to the fact that it felt like we were going around in circles or just repeating the same plot points over and over again. It’s very weird in my head because it felt like there was a development in their relationship, but it felt like we kept stuttering to get there and it felt both like we got somewhere and also that we got nowhere. Was it maybe the repetition of Ho Tae’s actions towards Dong Hee. The repetitive promises he gave didn’t really change much. They were supposed to show forward change, and it just felt like we were going back to the last time this happened and were doomed to relive similar events again. Maybe it would have been different if I had seen it as a film as opposed to separate episodes, it may have flowed better that way but that’s not what was available to me.
It kind of feels like we got both somewhere and nowhere and that I think is the fault of the original story because in that story, we started just after nowhere, so this story had to end at nowhere. The ending felt rushed and empty and that is due to the limitations of the beginning of the original. I also believe that this was a very one-sided story.
In my opinion, Ho Tae is the main character and Dong Hee felt very much cast to the side. It felt like we were watching the development of Ho Tae’s feelings and his story and how Dong Hee fit into that with only a sprinkle of plot development for Dong Hee but only how it impacted him in relation to Ho Tae. That’s just the feeling I got.
Overall, I didn’t dislike it, but I’m sitting with a lot of opposing feelings.
Was this review helpful to you?
