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Secret Garden korean drama review
Completed
Secret Garden
2 people found this review helpful
by kingsqueen
Nov 20, 2016
20 of 20 episodes seen
Completed 2
Overall 7.0
Story 6.0
Acting/Cast 10.0
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 6.0
I am quite late to watching this drama, but it seems to have reached some sort of cult status, so I felt like I needed to tick it off my list. This show may be the most cliche and full of tropes drama I have watched to date - yet still enjoyed it for most parts. We have the rich and arrogant chaebol, poor humble girl, wicked evil mom, noble idiocy, fated/star-crossed love, tragic accident, amnesia...and more that I didn't list. The storyline was not all that great. And they could have used the body-swapping with far more effect than they did, even though it created lots of humorous moments. That part was just a little messy. The main leads had a great chemistry together, which is probably what made this show work at all. Joo Won wasn't exactly romantic for more than half the drama. But his neurotic character was still somewhat charming even when he was being such a butthead to Ra Im. He was like a man-child that couldn't help himself from putting his foot in his mouth and being a jerk, but he was lucky he was cute. His character growth comes quite late in the series. Ra Im's character was disappointing sometimes because she's supposed to be this awesome stunt-woman with mad fighting skills, yet she's mostly meek and apologetic to everyone. I will say that Hyun Bin did an amazing acting job - especially during the body swap scenes and the elevator scene. So, while the story was all over the map, the characters are what kept me watching until the end because the middle part was somewhat draggy and repetitive. The last few episodes were probably my favorite, even with the plot weirdness. I doubt I'd ever re-watch this, but I'm glad that I watched it simply for the sake of understanding references to it. (and a little bit because Hyun Bin is pretty cute. LOL) Story-wise it is just mediocre, with some cute moments thrown in.
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