What more can be said about the movie everything has been said about? It feels atrociously delayed and pointless to discuss the irresistibility of the fiery Jeon Ji-hyun, the ‘abused nice guy’ comedy of Cha Tae-hyun, or the guilty pleasure of melodrama in the manipulatively heartwarming scenes you’ll watch ten times over. Even knowing what will happen on a repeated viewing (and probably even the first time), it’s impossible not to be sucked into this romance.
It all gets going when Kyun-woo rides the train home one evening and inadvertently takes responsibility for an unaccompanied, drunken girl puking on people. He sees hints of suffering underneath her volatile exterior and decides to heal her pain (for what other reason than advancing the plot?), subjecting himself to more than an hour of the girl’s physical abuse, public embarrassment, bossy demands and absurd situations.
With a script that started the practice of using real-life Internet stories for inspiration, My Sassy Girl strings along a never-ending flow of comical plot events to simmer in the chemistry of Jeon and Cha. Later acts abandon the humor and deal with quite a serious, complicated and original relationship issue. Though director Kwak Jae-yong glosses over it with a simplistic, extensive conclusion (self-consciously labeled “Overtime”) full of weepy trials and testaments of love, the film still does its job, giving us characters we love too darn much and ending on a satisfying, cathartic note.
Reviewed by Tarun
