Celebrity (2023)

Glamorous lives of influencers

The drama is basically about how Ari rises to a top influencer position and the people she meets and makes enemies with along the way. And, of course, how she exposes them.
I liked the drama overall. I mainly loved Ari's chemistry with Junkyung and kinda wanted to watch them more than the other cliche beaches of influencers. I also felt like it was too long for a Netflix show, as they're usually max 8 eps, while this one was 12 eps. The reason I gave it a bit low on the rewatch value is exactly because of this. I don't see people who likes a fast watch would rewatch all of the 12 eps again. They felt a bit long with the lack of proper action or more romance. Tho I must say this is just my preference. So folks who doesn't like much romance, will love the underlying slow romance going on. The acting and the production quality are good, so it was still a nice watch.
I still have to mention that I wanted more romance. I was also disappointed with the villain. I expected they'd do a cool murder mystery, but it was more of a life lesson theme instead... I legit expected the sweetest character Shihyeon, to turn out to be a psycho villain as a plot twist, but nope, she was actually simply just nice T_T
Nevertheless, I loved how Park Gyu Young and Kang Min Hyuk had a lovely chemistry and a cute couple to watch. I really wished they'd gave more of them... still portrayed a nice slow burn romance. Tho plot-wise they lacked more background info on why they were the way they were. Like at times I was confused about whether Junkyung was actually a nice guy or a bored playboy, or whether Ari had a traumatic love experience in the past that made her so cold towards Junkyung even after kissing or she was just very introverted? I just wished they filled more in to the main characters personalities & past, rather than introducing buch of superficial mean girls.

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I see the potential but it just never got there

This was an exhausting watch. I suppose you'd expect that given the heightened world of social media but wow did things drag. Idk why i kept watching tbh.

I mainly watched for the social commentary but that felt very flat. Rather than adding something new to the social media/consumerism conversation the same points were repeated and got stale. It’s a shame bc these things should be talked about but the script just didn’t deliver. I was confused about exactly what Ah Ri was trying to accomplish. She wasn’t like the other influencers yet she turned into a hypocrite by imitating the actions of people she claimed she wasn’t like.

The actors were all ok. Nobody was outstanding, just ok. This is the second Park Gyu Young drama I’ve seen where she’s the FL, and I didn't like either of them a whole lot. She suits a side character much better, and personally I think she lacks the charisma it takes to be a FL. Kang Min Hyuk was so mf fine here but I’m afraid that's all he was. Why people are saying the leads had such good chemistry, I don't know. Chae Hee was a CHILD. Shi Hyun was supposed to be the opposite of the two extremes I suppose, but she wasn’t giving me anything to work with. She wasn’t annoying so that’s good. The other influencers were forgettable.

This drama obviously had a lot of effort put into the production. You could feel the weight of the materialism through the screen. It still ended up missing the mark in terms of what it was trying to accomplish. Rather than12 eps this could've easily been 10. Hopefully in the future another drama with this subject matter and bettwr execution will come along.

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