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Hotel del Luna korean drama review
Completed
Hotel del Luna
124 people found this review helpful
by Poia
Sep 2, 2019
16 of 16 episodes seen
Completed 11
Overall 5.5
Story 5.0
Acting/Cast 7.5
Music 7.5
Rewatch Value 1.0
Hotel Del Luna is one of the most hyped drama of 2019, accomplices of this hype is the pairing of IU/Yeo Jin Goo with Hong sisters screenwriters. Unfortunately the drama failed on so many level that, despite this two great premise, I cannot consider it a good drama.

The plot is totally unbalanced when it came to quality of writing, one part of the story is about Jang Man Wol's past and her personal story, a wonderful story about a character who is serving an eternal punishment for a revenge happened in the past. The flashback moments are basically the best part of this show and the contrast between old/present Jang Man Wol is superb, IU did a great job in portraying different personalities.
Instead of making a drama entirely dedicated to this plot, the Hong Sisters decided to fill in the rest of the drama with boring sub-plot about hotel management and ghost hunting. Qualitatively speaking, the present story doesn't hold up to the past story.

In addition, the Hong sisters failed to develop interesting characters outside IU's role. None of the other characters can compete with IU's performance, the show was made for her, written for her and invested tons of "money" on her, with beautiful outfits, make-up and accessories. It almost seems that the Hong sister first wrote the role of IU and her personal story, then when they realized that they had to fill 16 episodes they added crap as much as they could.

Even the great Yeo Jin Go couldn't do much about it, his role was weak from the start, a scary kid that end up working in a hotel full of ghost, despite his good acting skills, the personality of his character wasn't strong enough to compete with IU's charater. Other characters were mere filler, they explained a bit about them but most of the sub-plots were closed only during the last 4 episodes, sign that the show didn't give them much space and importance.

The romance is another giant failure of this show, the initial chemistry felt between IU and Jin Goo during the first episode disappear complety when the role of Go Chung Myung came out. I was too curious about their story to care about a Jin Goo, in addition IU and Ji Goo moments together were very slow and the romance take a long time to sail.

If we consider that most of the drama was shot inside the hotel, the director had to exploit a lot of other elements to entertain the viewer, as already said, they have invested a lot in the appearance of IU, with beautiful outfits. They also used a lot of scenes that provided color games (the tree in the hotel) and the beautiful soundtrack. But as I always say, making the most of some good element of the drama doesn't hide a weak and poorly written script.

They say that Hong sister are a hit or a miss, HDL was a miss and it survived only thanks to the hype.


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