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Love in Translation thai drama review
Completed
Love in Translation
5 people found this review helpful
by 07222023
Oct 12, 2023
8 of 8 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 9.5
Story 9.0
Acting/Cast 9.0
Music 10.0
Rewatch Value 8.0
This review may contain spoilers

Love in Translation spoke to me

For my sheer enjoyment (and actor Offroad’s performance), I was going to give this series full marks but then it wouldn’t be a genuine reflection of the glaring plotholes it possessed. Still, I wasn’t rolling my eyes every other scene as I have with some recent series.

The acting can be silly at times but in the end, it played into the characters’ personalities anyway so it wasn’t impossible to watch. Everyone in this series was new to me so I had no experience with their past work, however, I thought they all did well with the exception of Phumjai’s parents. Though I’d say that had to do with their characters rather than the actors themselves. I believe in two different scenes, Phumjai’s parents had very contradicting reactions. His mother would be smiling and his father seemed concerned and vice versa.

Any main character who wears a Woody and Buzz Lightyear t-shirt on his first date is automatically my favorite.

Daou is a replica of Korean actor Kim Junghyun.

Overall, I truly loved the characters and love their healthy friendships.
Yang is serious but lowkey playful.
Phumjai is lovable, full of energy, and a moodmaker.
Bowgie was straight-up fun, the slip/split in the store is my all-time favorite part (also my favorite callback to Phumjai suddenly falling backward. I thought he was lying about the floor being slippery until Bowgie swept the floor like a ballerina).
Tammy and Cheer are great and charming female characters. I wish they did more with Tammy’s ‘player’ character though. Her suddenly doing a 180 because she reunited with Phumjai was a bit out of character, especially when she made no effort to keep looking for him (as far as we can see).
Tag is so freaking cute, I just want to put him in my pocket and carry him around.
Phojai is a good brother, but he’s doing too much. Sometimes I wonder if the writers accidentally switched his relations with Phumjai and Tag. I’m glad he gave Tag the much-deserved attention later although his apology up to that point sucked :/ Him coming back as Boss No.2 was legit hilarious though.
Odo was just chaotically fun and had the right amount of support for all the characters. I laughed so hard when Yang and Phumjai borrowed his car and asked why he was still at the shop (looking bored out of his mind) like even I forgot they had taken his car.

If it’s not obvious, the comedy was right up my alley. I always love a good childish show that doesn’t stem primarily from pettiness.

I enjoyed the music and danced along to some of it at times. I was so happy no character pulled a guitar out of thin air and started serenading the other. I loved that the series only had 8 episodes which was more than enough and they did fine tying it up in the end with some unanswered questions. Such as Phojai’s possessiveness of Phumjai. However, the finale also introduced multiple out-of-the-blue ideas where Tammy was a successful author when she’s never said anything about working on a book/story, Yang and Phumjai have actually met as children and were friends, and Phojai having a conversation with Tag off-screen about moving in with Tag.

Although the storytelling was fine, and I actually like it when flashbacks include scenes we haven't seen, this series overutilized flashbacks to replay, reveal, and re-tell what we’ve just been told by the characters so it felt slow at times.

I also wish two major story arcs had a different and more realistic outcome such as Phumjai’s unexplained feelings for Tammy and Phojai’s over-protectiveness of his younger brother, Phumjai.
Since Phumjai doesn’t care that Tammy is a “player”, I thought they would reveal that his feelings for Tammy were more of that of a hardcore yet a not delusional fan. But the explanation, or lack thereof, was that all Phumjai could imagine and see was Yang even when Tammy was right in front of him.
For the second arc, I wish there was a deeper reason than ‘you said I was a useless brother and you didn’t want a brother like me when we were children because I let two bullies hit me and break your toy’. Seriously, judging from how Phojai had his boyfriend, Tag, spies and reports Phumjai’s every move you’d think maybe Phumjai has some serious health issues that only family and close friends knew about or Phumjai had some close-to-death experience as a kid and that’s why his family babies him but they do it just because.

The biggest plothole would be Phumjai admitting to conversing with Tammy in Chinese through private messages when in person Phumjai couldn’t understand an ounce of Chinese and witnessing this, Tammy even offered to teach Phumjai Chinese. However, after said scene, the story resumed like that never happened, Tammy would continue messaging Phumjai in Chinese and he’d have Yang reply on his behalf.

All in all, this is a definite rewatch for me :D
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