Kdrama Review: Secret Garden

Drama: Secret Garden

Genre: Romantic comedy with fantasy elements
Starring: Hyun Bin, Ha Ji Won, Yoon Sang Hyun
Rating: ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤

So, being on the Hyun Bin binge that I am, I decided it was finally time to watch Secret Garden, a drama that turns 10 years old this year! There are a few older dramas that fit into the "classic kdrama category" and this is one of them. It was about time I finally watched it!

And wow, it's a crazy one! We have ALL the cringy tropes included! Some are awesome, some are... not so much. LOL. So our lead guy, played by the ever so popular Hyun Bin, is a rich CEO of a mall and one day he goes out to a movie shoot trying to find someone, but ends up finding our girl instead, who plays a stunt double. He ends up taking her to the hospital for a bad cut she got on her arm that day during shooting, and it's all over for him from there! He can't stop thinking about her!

So he seeks her out and follows her and torments her and teases her and bothers her until she finally decides he's kinda cute in his crazy annoying way. His bugged that he likes her because she is so poor and has no family and no connections and pretty much absolutely NOTHING. But still, he decides he doesn't care and ends up deciding to give up everything for her.

The twist of this drama is that they happen upon a weird shop one day, end buying a weird drink, end up drinking that drink and then.. bam... when they wake up the next day they have switched bodies. So then they also have to deal with THAT. They switch back and forth a couple of times, and it's really funny at moments... but it made me just want them to be their normal selves every time it happens!

This twist leads to an interesting moment at the end of the drama that actually had me quite weepy and ah... all the mean crazy things our main dude did throughout the whole drama was wiped clean away. And you love him despite everything he's done! Anyway. It was a fun and VERY dramatic moment that.

Our dude is controlling, which made me a little crazy. But still, there are some really romantic moments. And so I totally enjoyed this love story in the end.

There's a whole other side character story with his cousin who is a "has been" idol and is trying to stay relevant and win back his lost love. He has some pretty good touching moments too and his character is endearing, even if he does yell a lot!

So it was fun to see Hyun Bin as such a different character from the other two dramas I've recently watched where he is so serious and somber. This one he smiled a ton more ( and believe me, you want all the smiles!) and was crazy and had to act like a girl a lot, and laughed and ran around and yeah. Very different from our captain from North Korea in Crash Landing!!

There's not really a trailer for this one so here's some clips to one of the main songs, this version sung by Hyun Bin himself: