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Yes.. you did read the title correctly. Recently, movietickets.com has been sending me a lot of movie screenings. One of them was ‘from the maker of Chronicles of Narnia and Bridges of Teribitha’. Um no, I’ll pass on that. Another one was like ‘from the maker of a crappy movie.. yet another crappy movie’.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised when I received a My Sassy Girl movie invitation at the Spectrum. If you haven’t seen it already, My Sassy Girl is a very popular Korean romantic comedy that came out more than 8 years ago. I’m sure if you do some creative searches for torrents on the net, you will be able to find the movie.

I went to the screening with Justin, and apparently there was a problem having two guys together. They really were looking for a strongly female crowd and were giving us an extremely hard time to get into the movie. Some nice ladies behind us vouched for us and said that we were together. It sort of felt like being at a straight club.

In the movie theater, there were a lot of Asians and females. So my guess is that a lot of the people have already watched the original Korean movie. The following review assumes you have watched the original and will contain spoilers. They mentioned that they will probably change the music in the movie, so keep that in mind when reading the review. Last caveat, I may have mixed up some scenes so be aware of that. Another cool thing is we were the first audience in the nation to screen the movie, so without further adieu…

Gywen-Woo: Jesse Bradford
Crazy Girl (forgot her name): Elisha Cuthbert

Scene:
The movie starts off talking about Jesse’s childhood. He is from some small town in Indiana where his family has aspirations for their son to work as a middle manager for the Tellerman Company. I think the dad also works for the Tellerman Company.

They then mention that Jesse got into a big named school in New York, so he takes off to go to school there.

Scene Analysis:
Note that unlike the original, the movie has no interaction with the family so all those dynamics and scenes are taken out.

Scene:
The next scene takes place with Jesse and his roommate in college. Jesse’s cousin just passed away and they are reflecting upon life. They are in the school’s park and the roommate is talking about how few times Jesse has gotten laid in the past couple months. A funny scene does ensue where the roommate plays a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ game with Jesse seeing if they would sleep with the women around them. The game continues until Jesse sees Elisha, drunk in the middle of the day. Jesse is mesmerized over her, despite her drunkenness.

Later on Jesse and Elisha are in the New York City subway. Elisha is still drunk and in this scene, they pull the same Korean jokes from the original. Elisha sees a young man sitting at a bench, and yells at him to let the old man take his seat. Elisha plays around the railing and leans forward, and at the time the subway comes by. Jesse sees this, and runs to the railing and pulls her back.

Elisha passes out on the bench while saying ‘darling’ on the subway platform while Jesse goes into the subway. Jesse decides to go out and bring her back to his dorm room.

Scene Analysis:
The big difference from the original is that they chose not to actually go in the subway so all those jokes were removed. I think it was a mistake to really shorten this scene. The original scene really showed how mean the girl’s character was which was important in setting the tone.

Also when she says ‘darling’ it really didn’t make any sense. In the original, the point of her saying that was to give the Gywen accountability to take care of her.

Scene:
Jesse now has to carry Elisha through the fire escape route of his dorm because I’m guessing it is an all guys dorm with no ladies allowed. Elisha passes out on his couch while Jesse and his roommate discuss what to do with her. The campus police come in and take Jesse and his roommate to the campus jail because they had a lady in the room.

You actually don’t see Jesse in jail, instead you see him leaving the jail heading back to his dorm room. Elisha then calls Jesse to meet him at 7:13 at fifth street.

Scene Analysis:
The whole jail scene is cut out with the girl bailing Gywen out of jail. Also at this point, you still don’t get the notion that the girl is a mean person yet.

Scene:
Jesse meets up Elisha and some really nice art exhibit, where yet again, Elisha is drinking. Instead of Soju, the drink of choice here is Tequila. They talk about what happened in the subway, and Elisha says she faintly remembers calling him ‘darling.’ Elisha says her fiancé just broke up with her.

She passes out again, but this time Jesse calls the operator and tries to find her home address. After much taxi driving, he finds her residence. She lives in some really upscale housing area in New York, where the butler comes out and assists her back in the house.

Scene Analysis:
They axed the scene where she gets drunk, and Gywen has to take her back to the love hotel. Also by now, you don’t get the feeling that Elisha is a mean person, more that she is bipolar. Lacking is Jesse’s adoration of Elisha unlike the original.

Scene:
Jesse is now in class where Elisha comes in and tells the presenter that she is pregnant. Turns out doing this is ruining a big chance for Jesse as the presenter is a Tellerman representative. Elisha tells Jesse to swap shoes as they leave, but only Elisha wears Jesse’s shoes. The next couple scenes show them hanging out in central park. They go ice skating, ride horse carriages, and walk around. They eventually end up back at Elisha’s house where she gets yelled at her dad not to date him.

Scene Analysis:
The major scene difference is that Jesse doesn’t wear Elisha’s shoes. Also, we are missing the ‘drink coffee, do you want to die!’ and the guy’s dorkiness.

Scene:
The next major scene is when they go to the amusement park. Jesse’s roommate hooks him up to go to some empty amusement park. Jesse and Elisha jump the gates where they go on a zombie horror ride. At the end of the ride, there is a guy standing there with a machine gun. They think it is a joke until he starts shooting. The soldier takes Jesse and Elisha captive where like the original, he begins talking about his girlfriend leaving him (and even his dog). The swat team then comes in telling the solider to put his gun down. Elisha and the solider have a talk about loss and Elisha says time heals all wounds. The solider puts his gun down and then the swat team ambush him taking him into custody. Fireworks then come out, and Elisha gives Jesse a hard time for him saying that ‘they were just friends.’

Scene Analysis:
The scene matches pretty well, but the problems really lie in Elisha’s acting. In the original, the girl gave a passionate speech about love and loss. Elisha really could not pull off the emotional depth at this point.

Scene:
I don’t exactly remember when these scenes happen, but Elisha also writes ‘stories’ which are ludicrous. There are two stories, one which makes a parody of titanic, and a western story. The scenes are SO ghetto, compared to the original.

Scene:
Afterwards, Elisha tells Jesse to bring a red rose to her classroom. Jesse goes to her classroom, without any difficulty (unlike the original you don’t see the hard time Gywen goes through in getting to the classroom). When Jesse enters the classroom, you see Elisha playing Canon in C. Here, Elisha is not even making an EFFORT to make it look like she is playing the song. Jesse gives Elisha a rose afterwards and everyone claps.

Scene Analysis:
This scene really does match the original. Again, there are problems with acting on both sides this time.

Scene:
Jesse and Elisha are doing some more things together, namely the swimming and kendo scene. They go the pier and Elisha wonders ‘how deep is that.’ Elisha asks Jesse to go sit with her, and when Jesse does, he slips out and falls into the water. Elisha jumps in after him, but you can’t tell if Jesse has problems swimming or not.

Scene Analysis:
The scenes are the same, but the problem is that Jesse looks like a physically fit and confident guy, so it is not believable he would have problems in swimming, kendo, and etc. Also an important difference is that the girl pushes Gywen into the water, giving her a bad ass personality.

Scene:
Jesse has an interview with a Tellerman representative, and Elisha turns out to be the waitress in the restaurant they are at. Elisha gets drunk in front of Jesse, possibly ruining his chances at the Tellerman company. Jesse has to bring Elisha home, where the dad is really pissed off.

Scene:
Elisha wants to take a one year break, so she says for both of them to write letters saying how they feel. As they go to the tree to bury the capsule in at Central Park, Elisha asks Jesse to stand about 60 feet away and screams out if he can hear her. Jesse can’t hear her and Elisha screams out telling her feelings of why she is so mean. They then go to the tree and bury the time capsule.

Scene Analysis
The only difference is that the girl asks Gywen to go to a far ass hilltop instead of like 60 feet away. Again, the scene is not believable at this point. You don’t feel any romance between the two, except that Elisha is crazy and not a mean person.

Scene:
Afterwards, they begin dating new people, and Jesse is dating a girl at the bar. The same thing happens where the girl goes into the restroom with Jesse. Elisha calls Jesse to come by, and she meets the new guy. Jesse gives the new guy 10 rules to live by while Elisha is in the restroom. Elisha runs after Jesse and goes to the subway station office where she makes an announcement for Jesse to come back. Jesse finds Elisha and they hug. Despite this fact, they split up anyways.

Scene Analysis
I think in the original the person the girl is with in the restaurant isn’t actually her date, but just a friend.

Scene:
Time elapses between the two couples. The big thing here is that they are both in New York. Jesse has a hard time letting go of her, and you get some perspective of why the dad is pissed off at Elisha’s dating life. You see Elisha bringing home a bunch of creeps from the taxi home.

Scene Analysis:
The big difference here is that the guy does not go abroad to England, and you do not see Elisha attempt to contact Jesse. I think that is a major important point to show that in relationship that they she misses him. Also, you don’t see any character maturation unlike the original.

Scene:
Jesse comes back to the tree a year later, but she is not there. He reads her letter and it talks about why she acts like she does. Also, you learn that Elisha’s fiancé actually committed suicide. The next day Elisha comes by and goes to the tree. There is an old man there, and he admits that he read her letter. She reads the letter from Jesse. The old man also talks about how the tree was struck down by lightning and that someone replanted a similar type of tree.

Scene Analysis:
The scene pretty much does match the original.

Scene:
Jesse goes to visit her aunt, where Elisha is also there. They are happy to see each other and reunite. Turns out that Jesse’s cousin was Elisha’s fiancé.

Music Analysis:
They did not use the original My Sassy Girl music (they might not have wanted to pay the royalties). Instead they used the Forest Gump theme over and over. The music was overused, and the acting did not match the feeling of the music.

Overall Feel:
Overall, people who have watched the original My Sassy Girl will have far higher expectations than the regular movie goers. According to the screening, the target audience was 13-21 females, but I don’t think they even hit that. One immediate problem is that it began with mature themes. In the beginning they talked about sex, sex, sex, which I think would be pretty strange for a younger crowd. Also, I see that it is difficult for a younger crowd to connect to college age kids.

As much as I don’t like chick flicks generally speaking, this movie didn’t really feel like a chick flick. You couldn’t really feel the ‘romance’ between Elisha and Jesse.

Another problem in the adaptation is that Jesse is not a dork like Gywen. He is a fairly attractive and cute guy who doesn’t seem that he would have any problems dating any women.

The writers really took the really easy way out by taking the jokes almost verbatim to this movie. They should have done some more adaptation because some of the Korean jokes didn’t work.

The biggest thing though. Elisha is a horrible actress. What was so charming about the original is each character’s growth and realizations as they grew older. In the beginning and at the end, it really felt like they both were the same people.

I have to say, I am really disappointed in this movie. I would wait till DVD to watch it.

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