Horrors of horrors, I got a rude shock on realizing my all-time favourite Korean movie (above), My Sassy Girl has been remade in US (below)!
Unsurprisingly, it’s a direct-to-video release for a very good reason – it’s only meant for those who are really-bored-to-death-by-having-nothing-better-to-do-at-home.
Budden, if I were to be so bored to death, I would happily spend time plucking my armpit hairs instead. Anyone who have watched the full Korean version would truly understand what I mean after watching the US trailer (below).
From the trailer, it seems like a blatant carbon copy of the original story with only a few subtle differences – Caucasian actors instead of Asians, film set in New York instead of South Korea and ostensibly stiffer acting (check out the drunken robot in the subway).
It also doesn’t help that the main cast is made up of unfamiliar faces. Actually, never mind that, it probably still doesn’t help even if Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan (as in You’ve Got Mail) are casted for the fact that this movie simply cannot be ‘americanized’ while keeping the flavour of the original script.
It’s so hard not to compare. The natural acting abilities of Cha Tae-Hyun and Jeon Ji-hyun coupled with the intense chemistry between them in the Korean version makes the whole show very fun to watch and easily re-playable.
But the US adaptation failed by trying too hard to emulate the 'playfulness' so superbly enacted in the original movie, resulting to at best, a squeaky clean version of American Pie. Well, this is what you get when you try to make a burger out of Kimchi and nothing else.
The original My Sassy Girl movie can be found playing at a website near you.
2 comments:
haha looks like a funny movie. gotta go watch it.
I hope you mean the Korean version :)
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