야수와 미녀 (“Beauty and the Beast”)

Watched this last night. You have to watch this movie. It just came out in the theaters here, which means you can probably get a bootleg copy, say…yesterday. Anyways, I haven’t laughed this much at a movie in a long time. In fact, I dare say that it comes close to my all-time Korean fave, 엽기적인 그녀 (“My Sassy Girl”). Well, maybe not in terms of story or picture, but definitely in terms of pure comedy. I admit that a lot of the laughs came from pretty common routines, but hey, I’m not that sophisticated a movie watcher to care. Bottom line, it made me laugh.

The story is not even remotely related to the Beauty and the Beast that we all know and love (my favorite Disney movie!). It’s about a really ugly guy who takes care of a beautiful woman while she’s blind. Well, she gets surgery and regains her sight. He’s too scared to face her with his ugly mug, so he lies about who he is and avoids her. Will he ever be able to tell her the truth? [Cue predictable (but still very funny) antics] He’s really not that ugly, but he’s got that dumbass look going for him. If you can remember the guy from “My Sassy Girl” and his hilariously idiotic expressions, you have a pretty good idea of what I’m talking about. ^^

Of course, there were no subtitles, but my Korean’s improved so much that I understood about 60-70% of what they were saying. Well, the content made it easier to understand (which is why I picked this over a movie about a female serial killer). Yet, sometimes I found myself at a loss. Sometimes I sat there with a blank look of vacuousness, while hysterical laughter ensued all around me. Yes, you can probably conjure up a mental image of my expression in such a situation. =P Luckily, laughter is contagious. So even when I couldn’t understand, just because other people were laughing, I laughed like an idiot too. I guess it’s also part empathy. When other people are having fun, you can’t help but have fun too.


* I’m starting a Pic of the Day for my blog.



Sunset view from my apartment window.




The sunset’s golden rays reflecting off the 63 Building, the tallest building in Korea.