Oh! Boarding House (2022)

Oh! It is comfortingly LIGHT & FUN to watch.

Not the best but definitely not a bad one!

It is a good show with an uncomplicated storyline. I was not having high expectations for this series, to be honest, but I am glad it could prove its worth to me and hopefully other viewers too. The Korean LGBTQ+ film industry is growing and improving its series. I would recommend giving “Oh! Boarding House” a try.

PRODUCTION
Nothing extra outstanding nor something they failed in. The story feels less rushed than usual, but the storytelling/ screenwriting was nothing overly stunning. An irritating but still amusing scene for me is the one with the towel, on the other hand, the last episode surprised me the most. :D

PLOT
I especially enjoyed the soft pacing and the comedy of this series; you need to be a fan of dull humour though. I´d even say this is a parody of other gay romance series, obvious in pointing out many clichés. Both characters seem to not be written as extraordinary people, but rather normal citizens like you and me. Maybe a bit more confused. I like that they introduced an important topic in the end: taking care of unresolved matters before jumping into a romantic relationship.

ACTOR
Shin Yong Seok and Im Sung Kyun both did an acceptable job, and I am glad that they were chosen as the main leads. I especially liked their facial reactions which demonstrated the awkwardness between their characters or their confusion while acting, I don´t know. The Supporting Cast showed a funny and partly admirable performance. I can't think of anything that I would have found disturbing or unfitting. (Edit: Maybe that the acting stayed rather the same towards the end.)

OVERALL
As I said in the beginning, because of the light storyline and the effect on its viewers, this series is recommended to anyone who likes to take a break from suspense and too emotional dramas and who doesn´t have 24/7 high standards.

“Oh! Boarding house” offers some pretty cute scenes that are worth to be watched.

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Not worth the time.

For me this is the least good Korean BL so far.

The pacing is really off - it proceeds slowly, normally a good thing, but very little happens. The plot and characters start with some promise, athough the annoying side characters (tenants at the boarding house) are bit too annoying, especially the one who eats everything. The one who wants it quiet ends up with more screentime than the main romantic interest.

I didn't feel a lot of chemistry between the leads. You get some automatically when you have attractive actors with hot bodies, but they looked uncomfortable in physical scenes, with their bodies tense and standing very far apart. There's even a hand-holding scene at the end where they look like they're about to arm wrestle rather than showing any tenderness.

Especially in the last half, way more time is spend on a straight couple that you don't care about because the guy is unlikeable with no positive traits, and following around and telling us the life story about the rival for Seolwon's affections - what was the point of wasting so much time on this? It's nearly irrelevant to the story except for a 10-second really awkwardly written and acted miunsderstanding. In a series that's less than two hours long, you can't waste that much time on side characters - there was none left for development of the main couple. They liked each other, didn't communicate, which caused problems, then still didn't communicate anyway other than with a very bad chaste kiss. What did they like about each other? It's never covered, and since they barely talked to each other or spent time together, it must have been purely physical. There's nothing to invest in.

The first couple of epsides have some good comedic moments, but this is soon largely abandoned to stuff in as many BL cliches in as possible - in fact it's so bad that one of the other reviewers thought it was parodying the BL genre. I was joking to myself that one main character was a PE teacher and nobody had been hit in the head with a ball yet, seconds before it happened. Somehow a grown man is knocked out for hours by a volleyball, which makes you wonder if he's in the right profession - it's really silly. Also, it hit him in the side of the head yet his nose was bleeding, so they should have rushed him to the hospital because that would only happen if he'd suffered serious internal damage.

The acting is OK - nothing special, and the roles were simple and required no real talent except to look good, which the leads certainly did. The technical aspects of this are passable, but the soft-focus filter is set so high that the whole series is blurry.

I enjoyed the first couple of episodes, and the only reason I slogged through the rest is that it's nearly the only BL on on Tuesday & Wednesday.

Story: 2 - there barely is a story, and it's purpose appears to be to keep the main couple from spending any time together as far as possible.

Acting/Cast: 6.5 - they weren't bad, didn't stand out, and had such unchallenging roles that they barely had to do any acting.

Music: Fine. Nothing stsands out.

Rewathc value - 2. Cheolsoo takes a shower and that's worth rewatching.

Overall: 5. The suggested value was 4, but that's too low - I wouldn't recommend this, but it you really have nothing better to do, it won't kill you. It didn't help that this was running at the same time as the vastly superior series Semantic Error.

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