Kdrama Review: You're Beautiful

Drama: You're Beautiful

Genre: Romantic comedy/drama
Starring: Jang Geun Suk, Lee Hong Ki, Park Shin Hye, Jung Yong Hwa
Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤

Here's another quite old (ten years I think?) drama that is a sort of iconic classic that everyone who's into kdramas ends up watching at some point. And it's finally my turn. Toto and I decided to make this our summer drama "watch together" and it was a fun one for watching together!

However, be warned those of you who hate Boys Over Flowers....or those of you who hate very very VERY cheesy stuff.... or those of you who hate sickly sweet romance... or those of you who hate extreme use of tropes. Beware because this has it all.

It did remind me a lot of Boys Over Flowers mainly for the plot. It's about a girl who is training to become a nun, but her twin brother, who is going to be part of a boy band, has some sort of issue/problem, and can't make it. But if he doesn't show, then the band is in trouble, so the manger tracks this girl down and begs her to act like her twin brother and stand in until whatever the issue is gets resolved. (I can't even remember what the problem was but no wonder since that is not at all what the story is about!)

And so she does... disguises herself as a boy and becomes part of this band. So there's three other guys in the band and they take to her pretty fast. In fact they all fall in love with her... some even before they figure out her secret!

But some of them figure out her secret pretty fast and then it's all about keeping her secret and maintaining the band's image and doing what they gotta do. There's an actress girl who gets herself all mixed up in their business and she is going to cause them all sorts of problems because she starts getting a clue that something is up! And a reporter dude who is doing the same thing! Ugh, make them go away!!

Not always the glamorous rock stars shown above!

So it's very much like BOF because of course this gaggle of guys all falls for the one girl. But of course the girl falls for the one guy that is the meanest to her.. the most emo guy of all emo guys! And the nice guys, she enjoys and loves but not in THAT way.

Ah man. there are so many cheesy moments! So cheesy that we laughed and giggled a lot! But it was so fun at the same time. I love the cheese! I love the craziness of this stuff! I loved these boys, and this band and how this girl interacts with them. It's so fun and cute and silly and yes, even among the cheese there's some great romantic moments.

He had all sorts of hair styles during this drama but I think this was my favorite! LOL!
Dang his eyes though.

Lots of great songs come out of this one too. Each boy gets their moment to sing and shine... and of course they are all from a band or are singers in real life.

We have the lead dude (someone who I haven't "met" before) called Jang Geun Suk who besides acting, is also a solo singer. He is so popular in Asia that people call him the "Prince of Asia." He is currently serving his military duties at the moment... just started actually. This is a picture of him smiling, something he rarely did during this drama being all emo and stuff.









The next dude is from a band called CNBlue where he is the lead singer. And he played the sweet and nice and romantic dude who the girl should have probably choosen. (Ah, I guess that's a spoiler, but not if you know kdramas and know they always pick the guy with the flaws!) His name is Jung Yong Hwa.  His band is a band band (instrument playing) and he plays the rythum guituar as well as the lead singing. He's really good, like... really good.

My favorite dude in this fictional band is a guy named Lee Hong Gi... I already fell for him in a previous drama (Hwayugi) and before that I already fell for his really unique and amazing voice as the lead singer of another band band called FTISLAND. They do awesome rock music and sound nothing like the kpop bands you think you know! He is awesome and he tends to play guys with cute and fun personalities which makes me think he is this same way himself even though he is such a hard core rocker dude too! I love it. Here's the song from FTISLAND that made me notice them and realize that there's more than the poppy sounding songs in kpop. You should totally click and listen and see what you think of his husky raspy voice:

Of course then we have our girl, Park Shin Hye. She is a very popular leading actress that gets to star with pretty much all the major leading guys. But that's because she is amazing and does such a good job at any of her roles. This one was probably her one of her first and my guess is one that made people sit up and take notice of her.





Since this is quite an old drama, there aren't any great trailers for it, but here's a fan made one that's not too bad. (Actually they say it was for a school project and the quality is kinda bad, but the clips are fun):







And the big song from the show... each of them get a turn to sing it, but here is Park Shin Hye with her turn:

 

In the end I'm glad I finally got this one watched. We were totally wrapped up it despite the cheesiness and loved it in the end!