Drunk Girl

Gyun-Woo has recently been discharged from his compulsory tour of duty in the Korean army. After a dinner with friends, he sees The Girl at the subway station. The Girl is sloshed. Soused. Schnockered. She's so drunk she's about to fall on the tracks. Gyun-woo pulls The Girl back, and sees that The Girl is very pretty. But she also stinks of alcohol, so he finds her disgusting. And it's about to get worse.

As Gyun-Woo and The Girl ride in the same train car, The Girl causes a scene and passes out. The other passengers believe that Gyun-Woo and The Girl are together, so he is obliged to carry her out of the car. He deposits her onto a nearby bench and walks away from her, like any sane person saddled with an anonymous drunk would. But conscience and gentlemanly duty makes him turn around. Thus his adventures with The Girl begins.

Outrageous Girl

The Girl leads him around by the nose, and routinely calls and commands him to appear here or there and do ridiculous things. While standing on a river's edge and admiring the sunset, The Girl decides she needs to know how deep the river is ... so she pushes Gyun-Woo in to find out. (It's deep.) The Girl marches into Gyun-Woo's lecture hall, and tries to get him to ditch class. When he refuses, she asks the professor to excuse him from class ... by saying that she is getting an abortion and he is the father. (It works.)

Violent Girl

Aside from frequent slapping and jabbing, The Girl often coldcocks Gyun-Woo. Hard. When she's not physically abusing Gyun-Woo, The Girl also harangues strangers for various offenses: for being ill-mannered, for littering, or for being dirty old men.

There seems to be a sort of fascination with female-to-male abuse in Asia – I’ve seen several Asian movies/series where the girl pummels the boy, and it’s supposed to be funny (… and it kind of is.) An example is the anime series Love Hina, in which the central male character is ritualistically pounded by the female characters. Is this some sort of S&M thing? Female wish fulfillment for all the chauvinism? I don’t know.

Anyway, The Girl slaps The Boy around quite a bit. Oh yeah … did I mention this was a love story?

My Sassy Girl

I didn’t know what to expect from this movie, but I found My Sassy Girl to be bizarre and hilarious. What can I say? It is guaranteed to make you go into uncontrollable fits of laughter. There isn't one sour moment in this movie. The unusual story works because the actors are particularly good and totally commit to their roles. Gyun-Woo is played by Tae-Hyun Cha, a very popular star in Korea, and he does this sort of role very well: he can transform from doofy mouth-breather to a sincere and dignified manly man in the blink of an eye. And there are probably just a few actresses in the world who can be so ferocious and not come off as shrill and hateful. Ji-Hyun Jun manages the right mixture of charm and menace; it's hard to believe anyone can be simultaneously so vicious and so adorable, but she pulls it off.

The most fun parts of the movie are when the characters are themselves having fun. In between the drunken physical abuse, The Girl displays some moments of genuine sweetness, pathos, and even wisdom. And there's a scene where they dance in a club in their high school uniforms - it's such a cute moment that they refer back to it later. (However, the cultural significance of the talismanic high school uniform is probably lost outside of Asia.)

And there are so many weird little throwaway moments that really make the movie. Gyun-Woo hands The Girl a handkerchief while she is drunkenly weeping, and before using it, she inspects it for snot. (Asian cinema prefers snot jokes while shunning fart and poop jokes. The opposite is true in America. I don't know if mucus is funnier than feces, but when it comes to gross, vomit seems to be the universal language!) At some point, Gyun-Woo and The Girl are held hostage in an amusement park by an army deserter with a broken heart. (Once again, this is not a plot point that can be replicated in the context of American life.)

Sappy Girl

The best thing about My Sassy Girl is that it's very weird, but totally believable. Gyun-Woo once tells The Girl, "Koreans love melodrama." And boy do they ever. My Sassy Girl becomes a three-hankie weepie (with snot?) by the end. But it feels genuine and not labored or arduous – the cheesy melodrama works this time, because it earned it.

Sassy American Girl?

My Sassy Girl was a monster hit in Asia, and it is going to be remade by DreamWorks. It will be directed by Gurinder Chadha, who had a wonderful approach towards multicultural themes in What's Cooking? and Bend it Like Beckham. If Chadha's got some good ideas about how to change a lot of this, there is a slight possibility that it won't completely suck. But the movie must be changed - if it can be changed, but still maintain some of the manic energy of the original, it may be palatable. But simply replicating the movie is a bad idea. Oh, who am I kidding? It's just a bad idea no matter what. But I guess there’s no harm in some faux-optimism. In the meantime, there is always the original.




*~* Thanks to Psychovant for adding this movie to the Epinions database! *~*


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older