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Mary Stayed Out All Night korean drama review
Completed
Mary Stayed Out All Night
5 people found this review helpful
by Suki
Jun 1, 2014
16 of 16 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 9.0
Story 7.0
Acting/Cast 9.5
Music 9.0
Rewatch Value 8.0
Despite my overall high rating, fundamental things about the drama like the story and creativity left a lot to be desired. Having said that, it was still a very enjoyable drama. For the whole of 16 episodes, you'll be thinking, 'Seriously? This is the plot? This is how the story is panning out?' But mind you, you'll still watch it. Why? Because it has these tonnes of amazing scenes stringed together that your brain outright refuses to be turned off by the absolute ridiculousness of the story and wants to keep on watching more. The main leads have to be praised for holding together the drama. Without them, I would have dropped this drama halfway through. The chemistry that they share, no just in duos but the three of them together as well, was worth spending 16 hours on. There are scenes which you will rewind and watch again and again because they were too funny or too sweet (The drama has abundant amount of both of those, don't worry). The actors bring alive the characters that were too conflicted otherwise. The story was 1) Nothing striking 2) Not thought through 3) Illogical 4) Eve frustrating, after a point. But you love watching the leads so much that you decide to bear through that. I'm a very impatient person and sometimes -major confession comping up- skip parts that bore me to death. And I just skipped a little bit in one episode through the later part of the show I think. That's rare. The main low of the drama arrives after the 9th episode. You start to feel that the story is being dragged and you're being dragged along with it, the show tempts you many times to drop it, but you still don't. The thing is, even though the story is.. not so good, it moves at a decent pace. Before you can get annoyed enough to drop it, you have another illogical thing to focus on. So basically you don't even realize that while moving from one silly plot to another, you reached the finale and made it through! But I should still mention, beware of some serious character warping towards the end. You'll want to smash the writers' heads for distorting perfectly great characters into a morbid shell of what they were earlier, especially Kang Mu-Gyul's (JGS) character. Had me grimacing throughout the last few episodes. The main leads chosen were simply outstanding. I'm a JGS fan through and through and thought I'd be rooting for the girl to end up with him till the end but I've never been proved so wrong. True, JGS's character Mu-Gyul was pretty attractive and appealed to me, but I was more confused than Mary between whom I would choose! Kim Jae Wook was a brilliant surprise for me. I'd seen him in Coffee Prince of course but, there wasn't really much to see was there. Here.. Woah, I was blown away. Half the time I was thinking I wouldn't mind it if Mary ended up with Jung-in (Kim Jae Wook) either. Then my JGS fan-side would chide me for being a traitor and gushing after another. But I loved him nonetheless, he acted really well. Superb acting by all three of them actually! There were some majorly annoying characters though. All the parents in this show (not counting Mary's mother since she wasn't actually there) - pathetic. No parenting skills whatsoever. God knows how the three leads ended up being so good. And Mary's friends.. Agh, I cringed every time they were about to get drunk, I would either end up banging my head against the table or run away if I had such noisy and whiny friends, but I should give them credit for being helpful and loyal though. The music of the show was another reason you sail through the illogical story. The main song of the show 'My Precious' seemed off to me the first time I heard it and then later, I found myself wishing for it to come up at every situation possible. The rest of the score was okay, nothing noteworthy but bearable at the same time. Overall, I didn't find anything specifically wrong in the Music department. Like I said, there are many adorable and hilarious scenes in the show which you don't get tired of watching again and again. For them, and them alone (and for the main leads of course) the rewatch value imo is 8. I might not watch the whole drama another time but I can sure see myself opening specific episodes and watching those great scenes again. Verdict: Definitely not the best drama I've seen, but I've seen worse. This is definitely a drama that should be seen as a breather between heavy ones to just freshen up your mind. If you're looking for a story that makes absolute sense and if too much mush makes you gag, this drama is not for you. But if you want to laugh, scoff, giggle, gush - you won't regret watching this. Just remember to switch off the logical side of your brain, it'll get fried anyway.
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