My Girlfriend Is a Fairy (2016)

Stupidly Entertaining; Not Good, but Not Terrible Either

The story takes Chinese fairy tale and spins it with yet another cliche romantic comedy trope. A being not of this world, comes to Earth looking for love. And in this version, it is Wan Die, the oblivious, naive fairy, whose specialty is the kitchen, or more specifically cooking. Though a lot of what goes in this story is questionable, such as the sexist tropes that a naive, beautiful woman follows - or rather stalks - a young, handsome man she literally just met, among other things. Our male lead also is a young, handsome man who is a popular internet streaming chef, but in real life is a player who flirts with women and laughs at Wan Die's beliefs in true love, as he makes an offhanded comment about women becoming ugly once you take them home and see their bare face (i.e. without makeup).

But, for this review, let's foresake all of the sexist and cliche tropes. The movie in of itself is quite decent and, like my title says, "stupidly entertaining". As the story progresses, Wan Die stops becoming naive, while at the same time, Jiang Cong starts to believe in love as he starts falling for the kitchen fairy. However, all goes downhill once he discovers that the longer Wan Die stays on earth, the more human she gets, losing her powers and abilities. On a side note, the visual effects for the fairies' powers are quite excellent here - beautiful, exquisite and well done - for both Wan Die and her sister, the goddess/fairy of the moon Chang He. In the meantime, Jiang Cong prepares for the chef's competition, which he then loses. Distraught, he goes home, maddened that he lost, and further angered that despite all he did to push Wan Die away for her to go home, not wanting her to give up everything for him, is still on earth, he becomes a drunk loser. Wan Die stays and continues to help Jiang Cong, and in this montage, she redeems a bit of her character, at least in my opinion.

However, what through me for a loop was the twist ending. I was totally not expecting a villain type character in this romantic comedy. Once the chef's competition was over, I had thought that was that with the "villain". It was quite random, but at the same time, made for a good story.

My other main gripes with the movie was that Wan Die cries worse than a social media influencer apology video. All there is to her crying is whines and not a single tear. Thank god the crying scenes aren't many and they don't last that long either. Another thing is with the sound editing. It is EVERYWHERE. One character will speak softly, then another moment is loud sounds from the speech of another character, and this will happen with the background music as well. If it had not been for this, it could have been a decently watchable movie.

That being said, would I watch it again? No. But then again, I rarely re-watch anything, even some really great movies and dramas. The story is very cliche and predictable, and is essentially decent enough for a one-time watch. It's not great, but it's not that bad either.

Read More