The acting was okay. The lead did a good job, but it was nothing spectacular. The music did not stick out either. The one thing that did make this movie memorable was the White guy Nick, who was actually a lead. His Chinese was perfect and his character was rather charming.
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1. best guy friend likes Bestie girl from childhood
2. she takes her Bestie guy for granted and blows him off
3. so he finally finds somebody else
4. Then wouldn't you know it? Bestie girl suddenly wants Bestie guy PASSIONATELY and guess what he does?........
5. The male lead was ok. A stand up guy. :/ but I feel like his lines were all about battering me and his Bestie with how "Wonderful, exquisite and perfect" his girl was. "I was adrift for so long, now I'm finally getting married. Yay!" (:/ ugh! Gads.
6. All the chemistry was with the Bestie and there was none with the bride though the writers did their best to try to convince me there was. This guy should definitely be kissing his Bestie.
The PROBLEM with this drama is the writers make it so that I end up kinda-sorta wanted him to dump the fiance. (we don't even know her anyway) cause we feel for this lead who has done that Jackass thing that we have all done at some point and time in our lives and end up regretting terribly - take our nearest for granted until it's too late and we lose them to whoever or whatever. We want to correct that mistake through this drama ;) and as I watched (though granted, the heroine is light and fickle and so very wrong) I rooted for her :P The writers put me 65% on the antagonist's side for this one and I don't actually know why. It's an odd feeling when actually, I should be laughing her to scorn, thumping her Bestie guy on the back for "showin' her!" and congratulating the Bride on her catch.
Another MAJOR mistake the writers made was not giving the bride any depth. Because of that, she was like an intruder to me (although she technically wasn't). I found myself actually disliking an innocent person while sympathizing and also disliking the Bestie all at once for the stupidness she did in the past and present. So weird! This movie was not worth me dealing with those kinds of twisted emotions. Definitely not. :(
This would have been better as a drama series (although there are a trillion of them with this plot already). I'd prob. give it a 6 -maybe.
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I watch this because I love the US version so much. So far, the plot is similar, but in my opinion Gu Jia's effort to win Lin Ran back is not too hard, she's crying herself more than fight. Another difference is the presence of Nick. If I'm not wrong, in US version he is a gay, but in the Chinese version he is a normal man who act gay to cover Gu Jia in front of Lin Ran who start to suspicious about their relationship. Over all, I still choose the US version, but the Chinese version have more point from me in a comedy aspect.
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Bland but EYE CANDY
I watched this for Victoria, but the plot was very minimal. Literally nothing going on. Didn't feel for any of the characters because most of them weren't given any depth by the writers.Unlike Julia Robert's character, Shu Qi's character didn't try at all - more half-assed effort than anything and things just worked out her way without her having to do anything.
I felt like the film kept jumping from 1 scene to another without explaining sometimes and we're just supposed to accept the situation as it's presented and assume something happened (that was not shown on-screen) to lead up to certain events. It just felt choppy. The most common thoughts I had during this film were: "Oh I guess they're over that already", "There was literally no point in doing that", "Random cameos", and once "Ha, that's funny".
Oftentimes, I found the scenery to be much more interesting than the dialogue taking place or found myself wondering how they were wearing heels on cobblestones.
Things were resolved very quickly - I wouldn't be as forgiving as Victoria's character (Xuan Xuan) was, at least that quickly. Also, Xuan Xuan is basically perfect-ish? She's very accommodating and doesn't have princess tantrums over the slightest thing so I didn't find myself rooting for Gu Jia (Shu Qi) because Xuan Xuan is completely innocent and sweet, but also kind of boring for the same reason. Although I'd attribute that to the writers and not the actress. She was written very one-dimensionally.
The only character that I felt was really cool was Nick. He was oozing charisma and I enjoyed his scenes. I loved his flawless switching between English and Mandarin. Only con was that he only appeared when he was deemed "useful" - severely underused, I say.
All in all, not a great remake, but I've seen worse. No matter how pretty the scenery and actors/actresses were or how much they tried to bring their characters to life, it couldn't make up for a poorly written script/bland plot.
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