Han Ji Yoo likes to eat and drink. Unlike his friend and roommate Park Ji Ha (Jeong Ho Gyun), Ji Yoo drinks to forget his sorrows. Recently, his boyfriend broke up with him and working on the marketing team of a soju production company, called Pai Syn Tang Liquors, even helps to get free samples of the distilled drink native to Korea and preferred by the youth of that country made at base of rice, potato, wheat, barley, sweet potato or dangmil, among other ingredients.
One day, the extroverted young man must fulfill an assignment from his work team to find an up-and-coming chef to partner with to help promote the company.
In this way, Ji Yoo returns to the restaurant owned by the handsome and talented chef Park Ki Hoon and from which he was expelled for asking to be served soju. His mission is to convince him to be the chef of an advertising campaign.
But how do you get a chef who meets the proposed requirements when he hates alcohol and refuses not only to sell alcoholic beverages in his restaurant, but also expels customers who try to smuggle liquor into the restaurant? How could such an introverted person, with stage fright, who refuses to give interviews and does not even have social networks because he does not like dealing with others, appear on television programs and become an idol?
Han Ji Yoo's pleas to Park Ki Hoon to consider the company's proposal will be fruitless, which could even be very useful to promote his own establishment in the face of negative publicity from dissatisfied customers who cannot have drinks in his restaurant.
Han Ji Yoo refuses to take no for an answer, so she takes a part-time job at the restaurant in an attempt to get to know Park Ki Hoon better and find a way to finally get him to agree to work with her agency who runs the risk of being fired if he cannot convince the chef.
As the men begin to get to know each other, they develop feelings for each other. Hence, from the first moments in the relationship of the two protagonists, a powerful question arises: could love be on the menu?
On these budgets is built 'All the Liquors', the South Korean series directed by Kim Jin Yeol ('Individual Circumstances'), which fails to satisfy me for, among other reasons, despite showing Ji Yoo as an understanding and willing person to support Ki Hoo in overcoming his anxieties and internal conflicts, his character fails to achieve true character growth.
Likewise, the trauma due to which Ki Hoon rejects the consumption of alcoholic beverages takes too long to be explained, while the story does not fully explore the changes that have occurred in the character to suddenly not only allow the consumption of alcohol in his restaurant, but also to consume it himself.
I don't find it appropriate to start the plot with the breakup of Ji Yoo and her boyfriend. It is a scene that provides no tension or any usefulness to the development of the plot. Apart from being one more reason for the character to need to consume alcoholic beverages, this character never appears again, nor does he have any weight in the story. It only serves so that from the beginning we have the information that Ji Yoo is gay, which is laughable to say the least because as viewers we already know that the intention is to narrate a homosexual romance and that Ji Yoo is one of the members of the leading couple.
But the main problem lies in the fact that the promise of a romance does not burn and the story fails to show the passion between the two boys and reach the climax.
Despite a coherent, easy-to-follow story and cozy love scenes that tantalize the audience, the narrative is slow to develop and loses momentum rather than gaining it. The initial romantic sparks are extinguished in the ending with the waves of the sea where the protagonists go, while we left want to witness an attractive romantic relationship in which deep feelings are expressed and the audience is able to convince themselves that they are seeing two people in love.
The lack of chemistry and convincing romantic development between the protagonists manages to disappoint me.
Both Ji Yoo, played by Kim Joon Hyung, and Ki Hoon, the character assumed by Won Do Hyun, fail to act convincingly in accordance with the feelings and emotions we expect from them. They give us only a very superficial relationship, while the slight potential at the beginning disappears as does the tender love story that tepidly forges.
Like dishes prepared without seasoning, the story lacks flavor and fails to excite the public.
Is the weak romance due to the fact that South Korean idols receive rejection from the homophobic, patriarchal and heteronormative South Korean society and, especially, from their fans if they star in BL dramatized films, as has happened on other occasions?
Won Do Hyun is a debut actor in this role, and after this role he has never officially been in front of the cameras again. For his part, Kim Joon Hyung does have a longer career in the acting scene of the Asian nation, even being the protagonist of the films 'Streamer' (2023) and 'The Education' (2020), and appearing in several series as an actor guest or secondary character after 'All the Liquors'.
But aren't other actors who have convincingly starred in boys' love stories and are produced annually in South Korea at equal risk of being despised by fans? Or do Won Do Hyun and Kim Joon Hyung have no prejudices when playing homosexual characters but they will have qualms about being tender and loving on screen? Will the obstacle to the development of a passionate romance fall on the script by newcomer Kim Hoy Joon?
Or will these mistakes have served Kim Jin Yeol well? It may very well be like that, because in 'Individual Circumstances', a love series between boys released in 2024, the year after 'All the Liquors', its protagonists, Ha Yeon Woo, played by Han Jeong Wan, and Seong Woo Jae, a character who comes to life through actor JunQ, builds an emotional bond with more passion and love and both clearly show that they are in love with each other.
The truth is that the absence of seduction, the lack of romance, which also lacks ardent kisses, passionate glances, sublime gestures, convinces me that both characters are just close friends or were sitting in an intermediate space between close friends and more than friends. The lukewarm connection between the protagonists contributes to the lack of seduction in the romance.
Many find the secondary couple more attractive, composed of Choi Wan (Bae Shi Jun), Ki Hoon's assistant at the restaurant, and Kim Yu A (Han Da Sol), the deputy boss of the company where Ji Yoo works. How to value a BL product when the heterosexual couple has greater potential? Aren't these arguments for the work being condemned to oblivion?
With so many BL content productions, many of them South Korean-made, the technical and artistic teams should have taken their work more seriously to convince the demanding public.
Despite showing handsome actors and actresses, 'All the Liquors' is an artistically weak exponent of BL, whose main success lies in the fact that, luckily, it has only 8 episodes that last no more than 16 minutes.
This is not a completely disappointing production. One can still laugh and dream of sitting at Ji Yoo and Ki Hoon's table, tasting delicious dishes and drinking bottle after bottle of soju, but their story, without spirit, fails to move me.
So now I can answer: love is not on the menu. The menu lacks love.