Korean Movie Night: Life Risking Romance 목숨 건 연애 (2016) Korean

Ha Ji Won, Chun Jung Myung, Chen Bolin

Movie rating: 5/10      Neck score: A

CAMPY!!! We were looking for a comedy, but we might have picked the campiest one of our selection. Not that the others might not have been any good either. But in my experience, Korean movies in the romantic comedy genre tend to be on the campy side. Anyway, it was also really fun and a bit of a troll. It was about a mystery writer in a slump (Ha Ji Won) whose imagination keeps her creating situations where she's making false calls to 911, etc. She's constantly bailed out by her best friend who is a cop (Chun Jung Myung). But that same imagination also connects her to the mysterious and handsome man who just moved in upstairs (Chen Bolin).

Maybe another reason we thought the show was extra campy was because it was probably 75% in English, because Chen Bolin was playing a Chinese American FBI analyst. Not that he and Ha Ji Won weren't doing a very good job acting in English, but it was still not natural sounding, since it they were speaking slowly and annunciating everything to make sure they pronounced everything correctly and clearly, etc. Also, the English dialog was weird sounding because it wasn't written by a native speaker either, just to add to the campiness.

But since this is a rom-com mystery thriller, it definitely had its share of twists, but rather than being unpredictable, they trolled us all the time, so that we weren't sure who the murderer was, because they kept trolling us by making it "possible" to be anyone, even if it wasn't logically possible. There was also the trolling of us not knowing what was her imagination vs reality, because she was constantly daydreaming and letting her imagination run wild.

But for all that, it was still really funny, especially with a bulk of the comedic relief being handled by Oh Jung Sae and Kim Won Hae, who are pretty genius in that department. In fact, I absolutely loved Oh Jung Sae's character so much, he might have saved the show completely for me. I loved him and his little ponytails. So, no regrets, but yes, it was bad. The last impressions as it ended were: what the heck 😂. But really, I think that's what they were going for, so.... good job?

Monster Fail: When Characters "Grow Up" Badly

I guess this is going to be the closest I get to reviewing Monster, because I couldn't take it and dropped it, which is rare for me because I am a finisher.  But unlike all the other stupid shows that I finished when I should have just dropped them (like My Barfable Girl and Boorim School) I knew when to quit with this one.

Escape! There are 30 more episodes!!

Maybe because it is 50 episodes long and I couldn't even force myself to watch episode 20... That might seem like too long already, but I did want to give a chance, because Park Ki Woong, but it wasn't enough.  One of the biggest reasons I couldn't muscle through was that I couldn't like the main couple.  Well, I honestly didn't like the main dude.  He just wasn't right for that role, and the biggest reason was because he was too old and nothing like his younger self.  For the first time, the younger selves were better and everything was ruined when the show time jumped our OTP (and I use that term loosely) into a pair of less likable peeps.