| Language: Korean Director: Jae-young Kwak Running time: 118 min Release year: 2008 |
| Cast: Shin Min-A, On Ju-Wan, Yu Geon, Choi Jae-Sung, Lim Ye-Jin, Dae-kun Lee, Jeong Ho-Bin, Oh Jeong-Se |
Movie Review:
Jae-young Kwak's fourth film "My Mighty Princess" (following his ever popular directorial début "My Sassy Girl", tear-jerker "Classic," and "Windstruck") brings about an uneven amount of fun in a film that ultimately seems afflicted with Attention Deficit Disorder. "My Mighty Princess" actually finished production two years ago, but saw its delayed theatrical release in 2008. The move is an odd hodgepodge of various genre films from Asia. In a nutshell, Kwak took bits and pieces of Ryuhei Kitamura's "Azumi," Jin-gyu Cho's "My Wife is a Gangster," Stephen Chow's "Shaolin Soccer" and Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and rolled it together into a K-style Romantic-Comedy kimbap. With all these disparate influences the movie can please a large portion of film goers for some its runtime, but mesmerise only a select few of its film goers for all of its runtime. |
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One of the better decisions Kwak made for "My Mighty Princess" was casting Min-a Shin (a lady that probably owns the sexiest lips in Korea) in the leading role of So-hwi. Kwak does have an eye for casting future "super-star" actresses in his films, just reference Ji-hyun Jun (Gianna Jun) and Ye-jin Son as proof. While Min-a Shin won't win any major awards for her performance in "My Mighty Princess", she does bring about plenty of charm and makes the movie's many flaws more palatable. Between the two male leads, Ju-wan On definitely stole the limelight. For a lot of folks that have never seen Ju-wan On before check out his performance in the 2005 indie film "The Peter Pan Formula" for a taste of what he can do in a more demanding role. Geun-Yu, who played the love interest of Min-a Shin, was the weak link out of the three leads, able to provide eye-candy for the girls but otherwise coming across as a big stiff.
In "My Mighty Princess," So-hwi (Min-a Shin) eagerly begins college. She also isn't your normal teenage girl. Both of her parents came from a mythical lineage, possessing special powers and mastery of the martial arts. Her mother died at the hands of evil villains when So-hwi was a young child and since then her father has tried to raise So-hwi to continue the family's martial arts heritage. At an early age, So-hwi was often considered a child prodigy among her father's peers. Unfortunately for her father, So-hwi now wants nothing to do with the martial arts and just wants to fit in with the other teens at her school. She also wants to capture the attention of the school's ice hockey captain & motorcycle riding bad-boy Jun-mo (Geon Yu).
Meanwhile, her father hooks up with his martial arts friends "The 4 Masters" and laments the younger generations disinterest in the martial arts. One of his associates in The 4 Masters also has a son named Il-yeong (Ju-wan On), who was a former child prodigy like So-hwi, but now craves riding motorcycles more than practising the martial arts. Il-yeong and So-hwi were also close childhood friends. Because of this, So-hwi's father asks Il-yeong's father to bring him back home and persuade him to pursue the martial arts again.
Il-yeong does come back (So-hwi's father promised to buy him a Suzuki motorcycle in return) and tries to persuade So-hwi to come back into to the martial arts fold. Il-yeong doesn't make much headway, because So-hwi is so infatuated with Jun-mo. Meanwhile, Il-yeong has had a life long crush on So-hwi.
With that, you may expect the second half to continue more goofy moments between So-hwi, Il-yeong, and Jun-Mo, but if you do you'll be sorely disappointed. The movie throws out the first half's "super-human girl trying to fit in as a normal teenager" angle & the romantic love-triangle angle in favour of a pure martial arts film in the latter portions of the film. While production value is o.k. and you'll see a handful of entertaining wire action sequences, the martial arts angle has a decided half-baked, second rate feel to it.
Jae-young Kwak's "My Mighty Princess" comes out much better than his prior film "Windstruck," but fails to approach the likeability level found in "My Sassy Girl." The many episodic moments found in "My Mighty Princess" soon becomes a distraction, while the various film genres thrown into the film becomes a further distraction. This is problematic enough that you do come away with the feeling that the movie suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder. Is it a martial arts film? Is it a romantic-comedy? Is it a coming-of-age movie? Yes and no to each of those questions. There's also many unnecessary sub-plots that gets forgotten about as soon as they are introduced. None being more random than Jun-mo's infatuation with a much older female police officer. What was their past history? Answer - "who knows?" In any case, "My Might Princess" strongest suite is the appealing performances by Min-a Shin and Ju-wan On. There's also entertaining bits about the "abnormal teen wanting to fit in with her normal peers" and the love triangle angle between the three main leads. But, the movie loses whatever positives it has going for it with its pure martial arts film third act. |
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