Dec
26
2006
Our Happy Time / Maundy Thursday
Posted by luna6
Movie : Our Happy Time / Maundy Thursday / Urideul-ui haengbok-han shigan / 우리들의 행복한 시간
Release Date: September 14, 2006
Country : South Korea
Director : Hae-sung Song
Starring: Kang Dong-Won, Lee Na-Young
Runtime : 120 Minutes
Editor Rating : 4.5
(23 Votes, User Rating: 9.04)
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Plot Synopsis : Yu-Jung has now attempted her third suicide attempt. Her disdain for her mother and indifference to the rest of the world, isolates her from any chance for happiness. Yu-Jung also has an aunt named Sister Monica. Her aunt often goes to prison to meet with death row inmates. Sister Monica meets a new death row inmate, who asks Sister Monica if he could meet her niece Yu-Jung. Sister Monica asks Yu-Jung if she would counsel this death row inmate and Yu-Jung reluctantly agrees to do so.
Yu-Jung and the death row inmate do not open up to each other immediately. Yu-Jung comes from a family of wealth and is now a professor at a university. Yet, she has never known happiness since the age of 15. The inmate that she meets, named Yun-Soo, has had an even more traumatic childhood experience. He was abandoned by his parents at an early age and has had to live on the streets while caring for a younger brother. Eventually Yun-Soo ends up involved in the criminal world and gets convicted for murder. With their disparate backgrounds, Yu-Jung and Yun-Soo are still able to connect with each other, because both people know grief like few others could possibly know. As they both regain the will to live through their weekly meetings, they must now deal with their feelings for each other and come to grips with the short amount of time they have together.
Movie Review : Considering Maundy Thursday aka Our Happy Time is directed by Hae-Sung Song (Failan/Rikodazan), has an interesting premise and features one of my favorite actresses on the planet, Lee Na-Young, I was just stoked to see this film. After viewing the film, I was left with a teary eyed expression, but not from any strong emotional ties to the film, but more like the nauseating feeling from whiffing extrememly foul scented cheese. Lots of cheese. Boatloads of cheese and its cheesiness.
Cliche after cliche was thrown into this tear jerker film. For starters, we have a poor orphaned boy, that has had to take care of a younger brother, until that younger brother dies while sleeping out on the cold streets. Eventually the poor orphaned boy almost gets his life straightened, but has to come up with money to pay for his sick pregnant girlfriend. He gets involved in one last criminal act, but winds up getting the blame for a crime that he almost doesn’t commit, which is hard to fathom, but nonetheless plausible. Unfortunately the breaking straw to this plausibility is that the condemned killer is played by former model and now actor Dong-Won Kang. Nothing personal against Dong-Won Kang, he was good in the lightweight comedy Too Beautiful Too Lie and was passable as the action hero stud in Temptation of the Wolves, but the guy was simply miscast as a street hardened death row inmate. In a pivotal point in the movie, where he apologizes to the mother of a girl that he killed, he simply could not carry the weight of emotions that the scene required. Or put in a slimper way, the dude just ain’t no Choi Min-Sik.
Lee Na-Young was better in her role as the bipolar rich bitch with the occasional mean-streak. Her character, Yu-Jung, has been angry at the world since the age of 15. Her anger is strongest against her mother, because her mother did not try to help her at an earlier traumatic time (and in fact blamed her for her problems). The flashback scene where Yu-Jung confides to her mother, only to get slapped in the face by her mother, was hard to fathom but made more sense after a friend explained the scene better than the actual movie. The movie “Maundy Thursday” was based on a popular Korean novel and in the novel, (but not explained in the movie) Yu-Jung’s family was wealthy because of a family run business. Furthermore, the cousin that Yu-Jung accused to her mother, had a father that was an extremely influential politician. That politician could have destroyed their family’s business if such accusations became public and this is why Yu-Jung’s mother reacted the way she did. Corny, but at least the scene made more sense after knowing that fact.
I should note that Lee Na-Young is one of the more talented actresses when it comes to convincingly shedding tears on screen and, unlike her co-star, she was able to do so convincingly again in Maundy Thursday. As you can tell I am quite enamored with Lee Na-Young and this fact may have led me to notice some strange quirks in the movie. One of the more notable goofs would have been early in the film, when Lee Na-Young was sitting alone in her parked car. She takes out a bottle of pills and proceeds to swallow a handful in another attempted suicide. Of course during this scene, I had to notice her hair, which was straight as can be and quite alluring. Yet, in the next scene, Lee Na-Young is laying down in a hospital bed with a fashionably permed hairstyle! I’m not sure if the pills caused her to get the kinky hair or maybe a hair stylist came out to the operation room, but regardless it was another scene hard to fathom.
Besides the presence of Lee Na-Young, there just wasn’t much in Maundy Thursday to get excited about. The male lead was seriously miscast and the film had just way to many cliches. These cliches all came to a crescendo during the final scene which was representative of the film as a whole: quite touching in concept but just way to much cheesiness in execution. Pardon the pun.
buy Maundy Thursday (Our Happy Times) from YesAsia
Cast:
Lee Na-Young - Moon Yu-jung
Dong-won Kang - Jung Yun-suHyeong-seong Jang
Yeong-suk Jeong
In-gi Jung
Shin-il Kang
Bu-seon Kim
Jin-hyeok Kim
Ji-yeong Kim
Jae-gu Lee
Kwang-rok Oh
Yeo-Jong Yun - Yu-jung’s aunt
2006 Movie Reviews, Korean Movies, Movie Reviews |
Comments
8 Comments so far
Indubitably a beautiful film. A wakening call to the importance and beauty of life…
few days ago a have seen that movie in DVD. It’s really tragic…full of philosophy, it’s teach me us about role of family really bring the future of their children..
I’m totally disagree with your personnal review of this movie, for me and as the reply before, I’m was very sensitive to this movie, the movie has a beautiful music, the story is so sad that’s make my cried, when the girl take a photo for the guy, it’s so beautiful, one the dest romance/drama in all korean film for me.
hey u can just go to the site http://www.asianosts.cjb.net and download the OSTs for the Maundy Thursday.
does anyone know waht the ending song is for this movie the one that plays during the credits?
The movie was very touching, I can’t believe how much I bawled at the end. The movie was very serious and an eye jerker. We need more movies like this! Kang Dong Won Rules!
You got it all wrong, I think the execution of the plot was sensitive, realistic and coherent. Not a whiff of cheese anywhere, except perhaps the scene with the grieving mother. That was a tad overdrawn.
This film makes you care, and that makes it a winner in my book.
yeah perhaps full of cliche’s but what movie isnt these days, this movie was great……