5/10
Cute romantic comedy almost entirely undone by its third act.
4 June 2012
This is an overly slapsticky date movie starring Lee Na-young as an uber-dorky (and therefore uber-cute) public service drone encouraged by her coworkers to take an English class in an effort to improve relations with English-speaking customers. In the class, our heretofore loveless heroine falls fast for suave shoe salesman (Jang Hyuk), a slick player who has played far less frequently than he lets on and who's taking the class so he can communicate with his American-raised sister, who was given up for adoption as a child. Lee's infatuated. Jang thinks she's a dork (which she is) and is himself besotted with the English teacher (Angela Kelly, one of the precious few white actors in Korean films with actual acting skill as of 2003; pity she seems to have ventured behind the camera in low-level tech jobs since this). Characters are broadly drawn (with the exception of Kelly, oddly enough), which means gags are plentiful; some stick, some slide down the wall, and others are delivered with little animated word bubbles and cartoon heads that pop up on screen, The mangled use of English by the leads and their classmates carries a certain charm for both Korean and non-Korean audiences, but the picture is done irreparable damage in it's third act when the American sister shows up, played by a beautiful woman with seemingly no acting ability and a little-girl voice. Her scenes with Jang and their guild-ridden mother are supposed to be one of the film's melodramatic high points, but this performer's absolute wrongness for the part stops the movie dead in its tracks. I can't seem to find this woman's name anywhere online, but perhaps its for the best.
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