Zíza

Yamada Yuki is just not suited to romantic comedy with his voice, looks, or facial expressions. He's a great comedian, he can handle dramatic characters too, bad guys even better, but the main character in a romcom... no, he just didn't fit. Nagasawa Masami, on the other hand, is the type who can act in them just fine, and she wasn't bad here either, though I've seen her do better. Director and writer Fukuda Yuichi, who has a plethora of comedies and parodies to his credit, took a stab at romance and I don't think it suited him. It seemed so bland to me, always just biting off something but not quite finishing it. Sure, it is based on the American original and leaves out the most vulgar jokes, though that's the film's strength and weakness. What it fails to translate, though, is the chemistry between the main characters; I really missed that here. I couldn't understand at all why the two fell in love. Not great.

Even if the actors were working hard here and there, nothing could save the horrifically bad script. Won Joo may be a good actor, but he just didn't have much to do here. Not to mention, I found the main character terribly unlikable the whole time and felt like she wasn't playing what she was supposed to. A terrible show, even the minimum of palatable scenes and the one mediocre song couldn't save it. An obvious Titanic.

The beginning held my attention... for about ten minutes. Then came – apologies to anyone who might be bothered or offended, but I really can't call it anything else – blatant American kitsch. And it didn't hold my attention, or even seem to deserve it. Maybe Shane Acker should have stuck with his 11-minute short from 2005, because he didn't give the world anything new by multiplying the time of the short by seven. Yes, the grim depiction of a post-apocalyptic world was very successful, perhaps I could call it the animated face of Orwell's 1984, but that's just a maybe and a happy accident. Someone wrote here about the gripping action, which I certainly didn't find gripping, rather it made me worry about whether I needed to paint my nails, which I also managed to do, and that just doesn't happen with good fantasy... It would have been a good movie if it could have held my attention. And it doesn’t help that it had been one of my most anticipated films of 2009.

By now I'm worried about my mental health – how on earth did I devote 16 hours of my life to this? Cringey, awkward, boring, a bad story, and even the actors can't save it because they have nothing to play. I think this is a strong contender for the worst Korean series I've ever seen. I also think it's going to take a lot of time to find a rival on the same level. If ever.

Okay, a full round of applause. MatsuJun finally got a role where he proved he can act. I have at last watched a series since Boys Over Flowers where he had a lead role and had fun. I had been starting to think he had bad luck with his choices, but this was good. He shined, but the other main characters played by Eikura and Kagawa were great as well. I devoured it in one sitting and didn't think for a moment that I’d had enough. The episodes managed to keep me on my toes, and even though I pretty much always knew who the culprit was, I was just waiting to see how they would convict him. The plots are simple, the themes have been seen a thousand times, the crimes retold a thousand times; it's just that this bunch of lawyers gives it a whole different dimension. Lots of clichés, but it doesn't matter because they either managed to pull it off brilliantly or just used it appropriately (because who says clichés are bad? it's just the inappropriately used ones). For example, the two lead lawyers meet before they start working together when one of them destroys the other's cell phone by running over it. But it's used well in the end, and you're just watching the concert of these two personalities, these two guys, that it rests on and certainly doesn't fall. It's funny, quite brisk, you're not expecting moral speeches in every episode. Jun is a likable guy, Eikura is a hottie, Kagawa is a seasoned badass. It was just good, a lot. It was fun, a lot. Kind of overdone Japanese, but I had fun. Awesome. A strong 4 stars.

At the very least, you learn a few things here about how it is in Japan with preschool education. In my opinion, the cast was chosen very well, it was interesting to watch them play together as I know them from other series/movies where they played quite different characters (well, except for Tomosaka Rie, I've seen her in a similar role before). But it was a bit too whiny for my taste, and some episodes had too many scenes that bored and I didn't want to watch them. On the other hand, there were moments that I truly enjoyed. The series has a way of cracking you up as well as moving you – and it's nothing violent. In fact, it's a family affair, where you gather around the table and eat dinner while watching the fortunes of Avarenbow Mama unfold. A better 3 stars.

It took me quite a long time to make it through the first three episodes... maybe a month. Because I wasn't enjoying it, I was bored of it. But finally I had some time and I don't know, somehow I didn't want to leave it unfinished, so I sat down and watched it until the end. I started to like it a bit more than before, yet I was bored at times and hoping for the next episode. The best episode would be the one where we get to Hollywood, I enjoyed naming the movies that were mentioned here... :oD But it's definitely a shame that it didn't stay with the conviction: "That’s just how reality is, it can't be changed, it can't be hidden behind imagination and dreams, so accept it." Which is a great pity for the rating, because if it had stayed that way, I would have given it one star more. Btw: the most beautiful ending I've had the pleasure of encountering. Let's see if there's one that surpasses it :-)

Hard to define, hard to swallow for some, but I got carried away by the "imbecility" and had a pretty good time with it. I saw similarities to The Matrix, The Wolverine, and Spiderman, but why not, that could hardly hurt this movie ;) I'll probably go watch this stupidity again to see if I missed any homages to other movies... XoD Basically – I enjoyed it much more than Nim’s Island, which I saw before this.

Apparently there's a script problem with this series. Karen wasn't in the 2nd episode and it immediately got an extra star! This episode, however, is so stupid and the characters are so interchangeable that maybe even a star is too much. What did I like about this episode? Probably nothing. But it wasn't a total disaster. Maybe. We can hope. I think. Bleh.

This is so stupid I have to watch the third episode. The corruption in giving away state money, the hacking of the state archives, the journalism, Sahid... it's all just so stupid it hurts. It's just... I think as time goes on, as I watch more and more of this Christmas TV garbage, I get more and more into it. :-D Otherwise, I'd give it one less star.