What have I been doing this week? I’m glad you asked! Here’s what’s been on my watchlist this week:
*Note: My reviews usually contain spoilers. You have been warned. Proceed at your own risk.*
TV
So I Married My Anti-fan (2021)
Do you ever start watching a show knowing it’s going to be bad, but that it’s going to be fun regardless? That’s exactly the mindset that I went into Anti-fan with, and I was not in the least bit disappointed. Was the dialogue cheesy? Yes. Were the second leads annoying? Infuriatingly so. Was the story predictable? To the point where I felt like a psychic.
But it was also charming and wholesome and had some great characters, and I came away from the show absolutely in love. Lee Geun-young (Girls’ Generation’s Sooyoung) is a bad-ass who isn’t afraid to speak her mind, even if that means she gets in trouble. Who-joon (Choi Tae-joon) is an entitled pop-star, who’s handed everything he wants on a silver platter. But when they two of them butt heads is when the real magic happens. While not the most competent of people, there is something about the craziness of the reality TV world they’ve been thrown into that really plays to their strengths. Geun-young’s exaggerations and Who-joon trying to cover them up are a real rollercoaster ride, so it’s no wonder that their imaginary audience can’t get enough of them (as well as the very real me).
I’ll admit that aside from our main duo, there wasn’t really much to keep me interested in the show, but the bits that did stand out for me where Who-joon’s ever supportive manager, Ji-hyang (Kim Sun-hyuk), who seemed to ship these two as much as I did, and Geun-young’s parents looking out for their kid and not knowing or caring two hoots about Who-joon and his alleged fame. I also liked that the show took the time to give us a bit of backstory on Geun-young’s high-school bully/Who-joon’s superfan Yu-ri (Song Chae-yoon), showing that the girl was really just in need of a firmer parental figure and someone to show her the error of her ways.
For a show that was made in 2018, is only just seeing the light of day after three years of production hell, it shows its age most in the second leads’ storyline the most. The dynamic between Jae-joon (2PM’s Chansung) – who is clearly taking out his frustrations in the worst possible manner – and In-hyung (Han Ji-an) – who seems to be stuck in the same harmful repetitive loop – feels so dated it almost belongs in the 90s era of dramas.
Other than that, the fact that they filmed it so long ago seems to have stripped it of a lot of the trimming that make Korean dramas what they are. Some are for the good, like the lack of obnoxious product placements; but others, like the minimal background music take some getting used to. The show is clearly a labour of love by people who wanted to stay true to the source material, but ultimately they just wanted to get it out there in the end.
For a show that I watched just for a good time, I really found myself enjoying it much more than some of the more critically acclaimed shows that often come across my screen. Anti-fan is by no means perfect, but the show is infinitely more entertaining than I could have ever hoped for, and much like Geun-young and Who-joon couldn’t help but fall for each other, I couldn’t help but love the show.
Colourful Granny 