The central character is played by Park Shin Hye as Go Minam but the top billing is Jang Geun Suk as Hwang Tae Kyung. Th drama was first shown 10 years ago in 2009 and it's quite dated. This drama was before the era of super smart phones. The other members of the group are Jung Yong Hwa (CN Blue) as Kang Shinwoo and Lee Hongki (FT Island) as Jeremy. This is a love square. They all fall for the accident-prone, total klutz, all-naive, fully-innocent Go Minam (as her brother) or Go Mineo (her real name). Despite her naïveté, the title character is sweet and endearing and despite having the short hair, she's so beautiful, not a single pore, so luminous, face as clear as a newborn baby's bottom. One look at the character would tell you she's a girl so really, this makes this into a fantasy drama. She talks like a girl. Was her voice a few decibels lower? Most of her scenes are with people who knows she's a girl - Manager Ma, the stylist, Kang Shinwoo, Hwang Tae Kyung, the actress Yoo He-yi. So the actress doesn't need to be full-on male.
Logic would also tell you that Kang Shinwoo, the sweet and nice, would be chosen over the jerk, all hang-ups, allergic to seashells, Hwang Tae Kyung. But maybe, the character wasn't written with enough backbone, so the big jerk gets the girl and shouldn't there have been a twist? Ah, I get it the twist come in the form of Heartstrings, two-years later while Lee Hongki has this enduring friendship with Park Shin-hye that it's so wonderful to see on instagram.
This is very light, very cute and so floppy. I like the aura of the square. I like the dorm. If that's my dorm at 19, I'll study well. The antagonist comes in the form of Uee as Yoo He-yi. I have a few gripes about her features, the actress, not the character and she has a few lead credits to her name now. But once I see a person play antagonist first, I could never reconcile them as the downtrodden leads next time. Lee Sung Kyung in Weightlifting Fairy Kim Book Jo? Kim Ji Won in Descendants of the Sun? All I could remember is the fury in their characters' eyes darting towards their jealousy of the Park Shin-hye role as Yoo Hye-Jung and Cha Eun-sang, respectively. Then what if the first Park Shin-hye drama I saw was The Prince Hours, would I change my perception? But wasn't she the young Choi Jae Woo in Stairway To Heaven and was slapped a hundred times by the stepmother? I reckon she was so lovable as an antagonist that is why she scaled heights while her co-stars in The Prince Hours, are "da who?"
You're Beautiful is full of this dramatisation of "what if," scenarios, of dreams, of imaginations, of origins, even plots for music video settings. It's handled with a light touch but I still find them distracting. Maybe except for Jeremy's origin as an English guy, a great talking point for the fans within the drama and during the Lee Hongki and Jung Yong Hwa concert in Tokyo in 2017.
But eventually, this drama is a showcase of the many talents of its cast; Jang Geun Suk plays the guitar and piano, Jung Yong Hwa plays almost all instruments, Lee Hongki learned to play the drums for this project but he's got this awesome, amazing vocal range. Park Shin-Hye plays the keyboard here but we all know she plays the guitar like in Memories of Alhambra and learned the gayageum through Heartstrings. Plus they all could sing. I love all the songs here. In Park Shin-hye's case, she's also an amazing dancer.
Their weaknesses probably is in acting but in the case of singers or Kpop idols branching into becoming actors (once the group disbands), the more acting projects you do, the more ways for your acting to improve. Park Shin-hye gets so much hate for her acting because she could cry on cue and her haters think she's one-note and all she could do is cry. They would like to believe that she plays the same character over and over in all her projects. As if those haters could act themselves. It's actually hard to cry on stage, in-front of the camera and to generate emotions. I did acting workshops in my teens (literally a million years ago), I did well but the others were struggling (they didn't have my natural talent, burn!). The likes of Janice De Belen and Judy Ann Santos were honed by abusive antagonists in their soap operas as kids, so it will always be easy for them.
In the case of Park Shin-hye, the most-followed actress on Viki, (Lee Jong Suk and Lee Min Ho are 1 and 2 respectively, she's number 3, overall, in my calculations), her haters, are just that pure, unadulterated, trolls. They're so in-love with the male idols and male actors. Consciously, they think Cha Eun Sang is stealing their Lee Min Ho or how dare Cho In Ha let Lee Jong Suk (not the character Gi Ha Myeong) kiss her in Pinocchio. But I wouldn't watch The Heirs (The Inheritors) or Pinocchio on repeat if Park Shin-hye was not a cast member.
In this age of #me too movement, I still wouldn't deprive connoisseurs of having male crushes. They didn't, they couldn't get their own happy ending? So they drool over Jang Geun Suk, Jung Yong Hwa and with Game of Thrones being so popular, Kit Harrington. They follow actors with different leading ladies. I couldn't watch Lee Jong Suk in anything other than Pinocchio. Maybe if he'll be paired again with Park Shin-hye.
I'm watching You're Beautiful again, on Netflix. Netflix cuts a lot of scenes. The Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer scene is cut. They also cut the Winter Olympic screen scene on Pinocchio. So I revert to Viki for the missing scenes. I have nothing else to watch. Kong Hyong-Jin, unfollowed Park Shin-hye on instagram, so I don't repeat her dramas anymore. But I like It's Ok, That's Love, especially the discussion on schizophrenia. Park Shin-hye should do a drama with Noh Hee-Kyung as writer. That would be cool as this writer usually give her female leads depth and substance.
