December 20, 2022
Yana Reyes (Bela Padilla) was the manager of a chicken restaurant in Manila, but she longed to write a screenplay for her favorite Korean actor Moon Sin-woo (Cho Tae-kwan). One day, she sent in a story proposal on Moon's Facebook page, and immediately received an warm reply of encouragement from him. The engaging style of his manager Jay (Kim Gun-woo) to make Sin-woo closer to his fans was working very well.
One day, Sin-woo responded angrily to online trolls, so his staff had to do some damage control. They launched an international promotion inviting his fans to vie for a chance to be Sin-woo's "First Lady on the Moon." Among the entries who got a perfect score on their online quiz, ten girls were picked out on a live raffle streamed online to participate in a survival game in Korea. Yana was one of the lucky contestants.
Even though this film was practically 50% in the Filipino language (aside from Korean and English), it was produced, directed and written by Koreans. Writers Hong Eun-hee, BJ Song, An Su-jin and director Whang In-roi wrote their script based on an original script with the same title written by Filipinos Jade Francis Castro and Denise Mae P. Sison. I wish I knew how similar or different the original Filipino script was from the Korean adaptation.
Jasper Cho Tae-kwan is best known for playing Dr. Daniel Spencer in hit 2016 K-drama series "Descendants of the Sun." While he delivered Sin-woo's English lines clearly, his comedic timing in his English "jokes" tended to be awkward. Kim Gun-woo is best known as the antagonistic superstar actor Park Do-ha in 2020 K-drama series "Record of Youth." Kim actually had the meatier role as Jay was the one experiencing significant conflicts.
Aside from the talented and ever-charismatic Bela Padilla (as main protagonist Yana), there were two other Filipinas in major roles here. Kat Galang was Yana's cheerful co-worker and fellow K-drama fan Cha. Janeena Chan was the bubbly and friendly Korean-Filipina contestant Thea. I don't know how they did it but Chan's Korean and Kim Gun-woo's accented but straight Tagalog (complete with a curse phrase!) were actually quite well-done.
Once you meet all the characters, you can easily see the love-triangle form. If you predict with whom the girl will end up with, you'll likely be right. Despite the simple plot, the film took a bit too long to tell its story at 109 minutes, with lengthy "cute" scenes in the snow and a one-dimensional villain (Lucy Baik) causing trouble. However, Bela's chemistry with her two Korean leading men remains as the spark that kept this predictable rom-com afloat. 5/10.
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