This review may contain spoilers
Did the job as expected
I didn't have many expectations when I watched a drama called “Genius Girlfriend,” with Xiwei Tian as the main character, especially after the social media marketing campaign showed only a few romantic scenes.
As expected, Xiwei Tian's cuteness and convincing acting were the backbone of the drama, and the remaining characters, including the male lead, were just there to support her showdown.
I didn’t read the novel, so maybe, to avoid the project failing, they played it safe by sticking to the original plot to meet the difficult task of fulfilling hardcore fans' expectations. But from my mature perspective, they missed the opportunity to develop a contemporary story exposing the challenges of balancing a career, family, and love, which has been the challenge of the modern world and, from my point of view, the greatest challenge of modern society, even for mature people.
For those who love high school stories, the drama is accomplished. For me, I expected high school to shape the characters' behavior, but it spent too much time on slow, unnecessary scenes that added nothing to the plot.
As for the supporting characters, it was another missed opportunity to develop great stories about the challenges of becoming an adult, and Lai Wei Ming’s character was absolutely useless and unnecessarily punished. The only interesting contributions were the main character accepting the love, avoiding the usual antagonist trying to split the MLs, and the sick girl's quote about healthy people worrying about superficial issues when survival is the challenge for others. By the way, the final voice-message scene was unnecessarily melodramatic, illogical, and poorly timed.
About intimacy, I am still trying to understand the message of Asian dramas because, as far as I know, Westerns and Asian dramas have the same physical motivations. I think between the extremely sexualized American dramas and movies and the puritanism of the asian dramas, we can navigate more realistic situations.
Xiwei Tian's cuteness covered the huge plot holes. As part of the romantic-comedy license, money comes from heaven; the ML just wanted to study, and after five years of struggling with money, he could magically afford to pursue his studies, and just like that, he was a successful researcher.
For me, developing the story of how they became successful while trying to build a new married life, working remotely, was the real deal, and summarizing in a few minutes the most difficult part of their life was a wasted opportunity, forcing a happy ending which could be achieved, as we all expected, making sense of the plot.
As for cinematography, nothing special; as the comment said, it used too much AI, which didn’t affect the plot or cover the hole.
In the end, I had fun; the drama did its job, and it is another drama.
As expected, Xiwei Tian's cuteness and convincing acting were the backbone of the drama, and the remaining characters, including the male lead, were just there to support her showdown.
I didn’t read the novel, so maybe, to avoid the project failing, they played it safe by sticking to the original plot to meet the difficult task of fulfilling hardcore fans' expectations. But from my mature perspective, they missed the opportunity to develop a contemporary story exposing the challenges of balancing a career, family, and love, which has been the challenge of the modern world and, from my point of view, the greatest challenge of modern society, even for mature people.
For those who love high school stories, the drama is accomplished. For me, I expected high school to shape the characters' behavior, but it spent too much time on slow, unnecessary scenes that added nothing to the plot.
As for the supporting characters, it was another missed opportunity to develop great stories about the challenges of becoming an adult, and Lai Wei Ming’s character was absolutely useless and unnecessarily punished. The only interesting contributions were the main character accepting the love, avoiding the usual antagonist trying to split the MLs, and the sick girl's quote about healthy people worrying about superficial issues when survival is the challenge for others. By the way, the final voice-message scene was unnecessarily melodramatic, illogical, and poorly timed.
About intimacy, I am still trying to understand the message of Asian dramas because, as far as I know, Westerns and Asian dramas have the same physical motivations. I think between the extremely sexualized American dramas and movies and the puritanism of the asian dramas, we can navigate more realistic situations.
Xiwei Tian's cuteness covered the huge plot holes. As part of the romantic-comedy license, money comes from heaven; the ML just wanted to study, and after five years of struggling with money, he could magically afford to pursue his studies, and just like that, he was a successful researcher.
For me, developing the story of how they became successful while trying to build a new married life, working remotely, was the real deal, and summarizing in a few minutes the most difficult part of their life was a wasted opportunity, forcing a happy ending which could be achieved, as we all expected, making sense of the plot.
As for cinematography, nothing special; as the comment said, it used too much AI, which didn’t affect the plot or cover the hole.
In the end, I had fun; the drama did its job, and it is another drama.
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