by kiryugoji04 » Tue Jan 10, 2012 5:22 am
All I asked from Spring Bears Love is for Bae Doona to be adorable and be a film that's - at minimum - just enjoyable enough to justify watching Bae Doona be cute in it. Bae Doona delivered in spades but the movie, though it started off in a promising manner (like many Japanese comedies I love) with some fun characters, some silly fantasy sequences, and even a light art history plot thread that I really loved (*art major*). BUT THEN it gets about halfway through its run when it suddenly remembers, "OH, THAT'S RIGHT! I'M A KOREAN ROMANTIC COMEDY!" Cue LOTS OF SLOW MOTION and MORE SAP THAN EVEN I CAN HANDLE (and I'm a total sucker for sap!) and LET'S PLAY AN ENTIRE ROMANCE POP ALBUM THROUGHOUT THE LAST THIRD OF THE FILM. Wow. I don't have a ton of experience with Korean romantic comedies (and I probably wouldn't have given this a second thought were it not for my love for Bae Doona) but based of my limited experience with them, it scares me to know that this is apparently the norm. Lure you in with the cute and quirky first half and then ruin the second half with over-sap. Boo! I mean, I EXPECTED harmless, cotton candy fluffertainment but I guess I was hoping for something better than... well, better than that. And to make it worse, it's actually a really pretty film to look at! Between Japanese movies and Korean movies, I think the Koreans made off with the better cinematographers while the Japanese retained the common sense not to bog down silly films like this with all that extra stuff. Pffff.
Okay, I'll stop rambling now.
Bae Doona really WAS adorable though. I'd... I'd almost say I'd sit through it again just for her. >>
Artisanal Practical Effects & Kaiju Content