King Is Not Easy (2017)

What’s that drama?
This Chinese drama about soul-swapping was a hit romantic-comedy, but it also featured the worst plot twist of  2017.
da da da, da da da da da, da da da da DA, dadadadada…
What is “King Is Not Easy.” CORRECT!

Jeopardy question aside, I’ll break down this review into cast and plot, with a few comments on production, music, and re-watch value at the end.

Cast: Being a soul-swapping drama means that Bai Lu and Zhang Yi Jie had to be good at playing each other’s characters and their opposite genders, and in my opinion they were. They were hilarious, and the majority of their acting seemed very genuine *applause*.  All the characters, including our leads, did well. The plot is very silly, and the cast did a good job not taking their characters too seriously.

Plot: As the plot is bipolar, so must my review be. To avoid spoilers I will simply refer to the two plot arcs as “Arc A” and “Arc B.” Arc A was everything you expected it to be; the story was funny, sweet, and entertaining. It’s 20 minutes of guaranteed lighthearted fun—Arc B not so much. Arc B was highly confusing and disappointing. Presumably the arc was meant to add depth to the show, but is was not needed and very poorly done.

Production-The dubbing (the ADR) was very irritating at first, but I got used to it.
Music-Theme song was annoying, but the ending theme was pretty. The rest of the music was unmemorable.
Re-watch value-It is such a short show that I would re-watch it, but I would stop before I got to Arc B.

Overall, I enjoyed this show, it fulfilled its purpose by making me smile and laugh a lot. 7.5 stars.
P.S. At the end of each episode are short skits. Don't miss out—watch them!

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I started watching this drama because I was intrigued by the idea of body swap, and it turned out to be a nice funny story.  
That was until the last couple of episodes happened. It felt like the writer of this show just had a sudden idea at the end of making this story and they wanted to insert it no matter what, or just had the idea all along and couldn't mix it well with the rest of the plot. Either way, it is didn't work out and they were a lot of plot holes and unanswered questions. Also, the relationship between the princess and the other man bothered me.
But I'm going to look over all that since I'd enjoyed almost everything about this drama and don't want to ruin the experience. Besides, episode 20 went back to original funny vibes of the show and it was really entertaining. I'd love to see more about Ji Man and Da Xi.

Recommended if you want to watch a (mostly) lighthearted drama with a lot of funny moments.

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