Beatrice

The film follows the hollywood concept of casting someway way older to play up the 1 year age difference between teenage characters, but the male lead's acting and styling is good enough to not be distracting, especially as the rest of the teens are played by early to mid 20 something year olds. It's nice to see a high school narrative with no bullying involved and the teen characters are all charming, especially with their friendships, including between the two leads. The way the two realize and express their romance is lovely.

The male lead and his mom suddenly has to deal with a whole domestic violence plot line that is suddenly resolved at the end with nary a verbal exposition to explain how he's free to return to Busan to be with the female lead. It feels like missing a whole episode of a kdrama. I feel like had the movie had even half an hour more instead of being cut off at 2 hours, they could have completed the storyline, it's so weird it's like a whole chunk got deleted. Either the movie needed to be longer or it should have been a mini series or even full drama series instead. It would have been nice to see a bit more of the second male love interest as well as he actually seemed like he had more dimensions to him, not being shallow, top hundred in scholastics, actually appreciating the female lead's actions, but that's not as consequential as the male lead's plot being entirely missing.

The film is still a cute watch, it just feels incomplete.