200 Pounds Beauty

Cast:
Hanna (Kim Ah-jung)
Sang Jun (Ju Jin-mo)
Kim Yong-geon
Kim Hyeon-sook
Im Hyeon-sik

Synopsis:

Hanna is an overweight lip sync vocalist for a singer, Ammy, as well as a part time phone sex worker. She hides behind in the back stage because of her ugly appearance. She has a father who is currently in the mental hospital and she had been cheated of her money due to her naive nature.

She is in love with Sang-Jun (Ammy's music producer) and was once humiliated by Ammy during his birthday party. After overhearing Sang-Jun and Ammy's conversation in the bathroom, the heart broken Hanna decided to go for a whole makeover to change her life. She abandoned her dog and went into hiding (surgery) for a year.

Hanna then returns from surgery to become a beautiful, slender woman whom even her best friend could not recognize her (but her dog did!). She went to audition to be Ammy's backup singer again and this time managed to clinch her own singing contract.

Slowly, Hanna tried means and ways to keep her new identity yet risk losing her friendship with her best friend and her love for her father. The story then continues to show how her identity is slowly revealed and at the end she finally admits to everything at her first public concert.

Thoughts:

This reminds me of the 'Love on a Diet' show starring Andy Lau and Sammi Cheung where skinny artists are given paddings to pretend to be fat.

Kim Ah-Jung has portrayed Hanna very well. Poor her for having to wear the fat suit for almost half of the show. I read that she had to go through a lot of vocal training for the singing portion. The part where she scolds Sang-Jin for hitting the delivery boy was really convincing. I almost cried at the end when she confessed to the audience at the concert.

Sang-Jin is a very confusing character. At first he looked like one who is just using Hanna, then slowly the character is shown to have a better side of him and that he said Hanna is special to him? And furthermore, he said that he never want his girlfriend to have plastic surgery. But at the end he came to slowly like Hanna. I don't understand these characteristics, very contradictory. At the end, Sang-Jin admits that he was attracted to Hanna's innocence. Maybe that's what he liked about her in the first place. And being humans, not liking anything ugly, he did not do anything about it. Oh, and Ju Jin-Mo is really good looking! I had been ogling at him during the whole movie.

I guess every movie has some unrealistic points. How can she last for so long as a singer with just having lip sync? I don't think this happens in real life does it? Anyway, this ‘bad person’ of the film did not appear much. I am having difficulty finding her name. It’s like she is a cameo!

This show touches a lot on the topic of appearance versus inner beauty. In this realistic world, I think many people believe that appearances are very important. I admit, some good looking people can be the worst to be with but usually good looking people have things going easier for them. In Korea, I heard that plastic surgery is very common and that being good looking means you can get a job easily.

This movie has actually shown that people are accepting the fact that plastic surgery is a part of their society. I can’t imagine how it’d be like with my nose about to drop off at any time though. But yet, I feel happy when I see the main character going from fat and unhappy to pretty and happy. Also, I wonder if this movie will make fat people feel bad?

All in all, this is a very enjoyable, fun, heart warming and entertaining comedy. Five stars!