He Was Cool
Director: Lee Hwan-kyung
Year: 2004
Rating: 4.5
Country: Korea
This is another
brainless Korean romantic comedy that I wandered into and could not find
my way out. Two-hours long. There should be a law that romantic comedies
can't go beyond 90-mintes. There were so many break-ups in this film that
I was exhausted and wanted a drink. Oh, not again. Give me a shot of soju.
The success of My Sassy Girl in 2001 spawned an eruption of similarly spunky
and pouty teenage girls going through the difficulties of first love. In
this one Jeong Da-bin portrays Ye-won, a high school girl who becomes the
object of desire of the school tough guy, the cool guy who can beat up anyone.
Her performance mainly consists of sly smiles, pouts and tears - and a lot
of running. She is quite cute at times. Tiresome at others. Sadly, I read
after watching this that she committed suicide three years after this film
- a victim of online bullying that seems to plague Korean celebrities. You
make a mistake and the shit gets piled on. I have never figured out why people
feel the need to do so. A real sickness.
This one starts off well enough but just
drags like a two-legged dog. Eun-sung (Song Seung-heon) is the coolest guy
in school. He leads a pack of three other guys in pushing others around.
But also, often coming to the help of people being bullied. He posts on the
school website about a few ugly girls not showing their faces and our heroine,
Ye-won, responds telling him to shove it. The next day she gets a phone call
from him telling her he is going to beat her up. Her lip does a lot of quivering.
The making of course of a Korean romantic comedy. In an amusing scene, they
are sitting next to each other in a hair salon when they realize who they
each are and she does a Jessie Owens 100-yard dash. The next time though
she jumps over a wall to avoid him and lands on him - mouth to mouth - and
he decides she is the one for him. Or he will beat her up. And she of course
falls for him.
The messaging here is awful - be a doormat
and you will get the coolest guy in school. For a romantic comedy there is
a lot of fighting between school cliques - some of it done fairly well. School
is a survival course. The other thing that did not go down well was about
AIDS. His father died of AIDS and no one would touch the son and the son
won't touch anyone. He tells her that he fears he may have AIDS and doesn't
want to kill her. Unless, you had sex with your father, you don't have AIDS.
Terrible messaging. A strange combination of tepid romance, melodrama, punch-ups
and comedy.
