MR: MY SASSY GIRL

This is a biased review. There, you’ve been warned.

I think this was the first Korean movie I ever watched and boy, what it did to me was awesome. Till today, I make a point to watch this movie once a year-as I do with a few other movies but we’ll go into that later.

The plot is simple, one day Gyeon woo saves a drunk girl from standing too near the train track(the do not cross the line yellow sign) and that’s when all his troubles begin. The girl then vomits on a man, calling Gyeon woo ‘honey’ before collapsing. Thus Gyeon woo is made to take care of the girl. That started their relationship. The Girl would often calls him to do her crazy biddings, and she’s like this shrew Xanthippe who orders people around as she pleased and nitpicking on everything she wants!!

The list of (Crazy) Things She Asks Gyeon Woo To Do:

-Drink only Coffee

-Don’t stumble, speak clearly

-skip class and go to theme park

-read her scripts

-jump into the lake

-remember her birthday

 -send her scripts to movie company

-play games in the subway (when he sends her home to Bupyung)

-Play squash, kendo

-wear her HIGH HEELS and CHASE her around the college

-during her mass lecture, come and give her a rose

-go to disco dressed like school students

-crash her blind date

-write their feelings in a time capsule

-shout at her from a faraway hill

Gyeon woo, being the pacifist and softy that he is (all because he was raised like a girl by his mother) succumbs to every order, because first, he knows that The Girl(TG) is behaving that way because she is hiding her innermost sadness. You see, she lost her boyfriend, and the night she meets Gyeon woo(GW) was the first anniversary of his death. At first, she thought his dead boyfriend kinda send GW to her but then she becomes guilty as she falls for GW more. So she decides to take a time out and leaves for London. After two years, she returns and searches for GW but to no avail. GW meanwhile, improves himself by mastering whatever that he needs to(squash, kendo, swimming, writing) and becomes a writer who successfully sold his script about his story with The Girl to a movie company.

TWIST ENDING

When GW meets TG that fateful night by the train track, he was going to Bupyung visiting her auntie, who had lost her son due to an accident. After two years, GW prepares to go see her (per order by his mother) because he resembles his dead cousin. GW doesn’t like going to see his auntie because she likes to rub her face and kiss him LOL When GW arrives at the restaurant, he is surprised to see TG is there. It turns out, TG dated his dead cousin, and her auntie had long wanted to introduce GW to her. So you can say it was a match made in heaven, ONE FROM THE FUTURE :)

WHY I LOVE THIS MOVIE

-The twist ending of course. TG is obsessed with People From The Future, and she makes her main leading character in her scripts ALL coming from the future. Her reason is ‘people from the future might just be around us’ This thought stems from her wanting to go to the past, and maybe rectify what happened to her boyfriend, or maybe she just misses him and longs to see him again. However GW is her ‘Man From The Future’ whom she meets and falls in love with two years earlier. Isn’t that sweet!

-I like TG’s character. She’s a tsundere, if you go by anime-manga standard, and I like tsunderes cuz they’re fun!! In fact my mom’s a tsundere, she’s not as extreme as TG but then she is. I can’t explain why I like them. And I know for a fact there are guys who love them.

-It’s so funny, the way their relationship develops and the silly silly things TG asks him to do. I LOVE the slap me game they play at the train. A kid draws a line on the floor with his mother’s lipstick, and they make a bet, that anytime a person crosses over the line with a left foot, TG wins and if it's the right foot, GW wins and the winner gets to slap the other person. At first GW wins but then comes an army of soldiers marching and crosses the line with their left feet. So you can imagine the loud smacks TG gives GW ROFL

-I love GW’s character too. And I love the fact that he grows up and wants to be a better man for TG. I love that that is the effect TG has on him and that both of them are changed since that night they met.

-I love everything about GW’s family, most especially the part when his father scolds a very young GW for not studying. He says “since you inherited your brain from me” After a few years and GW becomes more horrible at studying, he changes his words “since you inherited your brain from your mom,” HA. LOL. And the part that he narrates that whenever he sleeps outside, he needs to come home discreetly because his mother will hit him with whatever she has in her hands. The trick is to return at the right time and wallah, as he tells it, his mother is holding a beater PAWNED LOL

-The fact that TG is so amazingly beautiful, because she needs to in order for GW to stay by her side in the beginning of the relationship. I mean even though GW is a softy, his ego would blow up by TG’s hitting and punching him but he stays because he’s immensely attracted to her beauty, and after knowing her, by her sadness and her personality. I like it that the scriptwriter understands this-no man can withstand an abuse by a woman unless she is beautiful. I like that the superficial goes into profound and not only GW see this, we, the audience too.

-Uh oh, and I love it that the script didn't give The Girl a name. She is referred to as she, and TG from the beginning to the end. It is significant, because I think, she doesn't represent herself, she represents all the ladies in the world. We ladies are as complicated and as changeable as we can. We draw our strengths from our emotions and we drive men crazy with our antiques, one way or another. TG also symbolises LOVE, as love is crazy, selfish, but beautiful and brings happiness.

IN CONCLUSION

                I’ll end this review with a quote from Haruka Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, about the notion of love-LOVE IS SELFISH AND CRAZY.

“I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty five days a year, I was still in elementary school at the time - fifth or sixth grade - but I made up my mind once and for all.”

“Wow,” I said. “Did the search pay off?”

“That’s the hard part,” said Midori. She watched the rising smoke for a while, thinking. “I guess I’ve been waiting so long I’m looking for perfection. That makes it tough.”

“Waiting for the perfect love?”

“No, even I know better than that. I’m looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you’re doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window. That’s what I’m looking for.”

“I’m not sure that has anything to do with love,” I said with some amazement.

“It does,” she said. “You just don’t know it. There are time in a girl’s life when things like that are incredibly important.”

“Things like throwing strawberry shortcake out the window?”

“Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. “Now I see, Midori. What a fool I have been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortcake. I have all the intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To make it up to you, I’ll go out and buy you something else. What would you like? Chocolate Mousse? Cheesecake?”

“So then what?”

“So then I’d give him all the love he deserves for what he’s done.”

“Sounds crazy to me.”

“Well, to me, that’s what love is…”