I watched this series because I was curious what Hyun Bin, the star of Crash Landing on You, was like in a different role. Well, although I find him even better-looking as a more mature man, he was already beautiful as a young guy and I liked him better in this role because his character is more interesting. He gets to act like a total jerk many times, and some of these scenes are really funny, actually, for example when he tries to defend his tacky designer tracksuits. He also laughs and smiles a lot in this role, which suits him a lot.
There is an even better-looking guy in the series, the stunt director played by Philip Lee, who is suffering from unrequited love here, so all he does is look into the camera with woeful eyes.
If you are like me and fairly new to K-dramas, let me warn you that this is an over-the-top romantic and melodramatic story, even though there are some comic relief scenes (some of which I found funny, some not at all). If you take elements from Pride and Prejudice (the protagonists disliking each other first, spirited repartee between the two leads), Pretty Woman (huge social gap, the woman's uncompromising attitude) and the Little Mermaid (some plot elements, use of magic, frequent allusions in the series), you can almost (!) imagine the level of romantic melodrama. If this wasn't enough, the romantic (or cheesy, depending on your taste) soundtrack adds another emotional layer.
The female protagonist's character is rather inconsistent. She is a spunky stuntwoman, brave and athletic, and she stands her ground when the spoiled rich guy starts to pursue her, kicking and hitting him and rejecting his advances many times. However, she keeps apologising and bowing to everybody else and cries all the time. This inconsistency becomes problematic at the body switching scenes; it seems that the male actor does not really know how to act when he plays her.
Some reviewers here objected to the outdated portrayal of women, how the female lead gets to be pursued by her rich suitor, even though she has told him not to several times, how he keeps grabbing her arm and holding her down. This did not bother me at all, first, because I think to be pursued like that by a (good-looking) guy who is obsessed with you is a fulfilling fantasy for most women, and second, because the scenes where he grabs her and holds her down are really innocent, he just wants to hold her hands or hold her in his arms. The scenes where they watch the other sleeping from close up are just adorable. However, it seemed rather outdated to me that the female protagonist was shown to be appalled by the idea of physical intimacy before marriage. I get it, conservative audiences like the idea of no sex or anything like that before marriage, but at least she could have been tempted. Here, at least the guy (almost) acts like a normal young man in this respect, unlike in CLOY. Her asexuality also means that the body switching scenes become very chaste and awkward, as if she is not interested in the male body she temporarily inhabits at all.
There is also a storyline featuring an aging K-pop star, a plagiarism scandal and a young composer, but I didn't understand half of it, perhaps I was too distracted to follow the subtitles by the Emo hairstyles, which must have been very trendy ten years ago but seem a bit ridiculous now...
I agree that the evil mother character was way overdone.
There is an even better-looking guy in the series, the stunt director played by Philip Lee, who is suffering from unrequited love here, so all he does is look into the camera with woeful eyes.
If you are like me and fairly new to K-dramas, let me warn you that this is an over-the-top romantic and melodramatic story, even though there are some comic relief scenes (some of which I found funny, some not at all). If you take elements from Pride and Prejudice (the protagonists disliking each other first, spirited repartee between the two leads), Pretty Woman (huge social gap, the woman's uncompromising attitude) and the Little Mermaid (some plot elements, use of magic, frequent allusions in the series), you can almost (!) imagine the level of romantic melodrama. If this wasn't enough, the romantic (or cheesy, depending on your taste) soundtrack adds another emotional layer.
The female protagonist's character is rather inconsistent. She is a spunky stuntwoman, brave and athletic, and she stands her ground when the spoiled rich guy starts to pursue her, kicking and hitting him and rejecting his advances many times. However, she keeps apologising and bowing to everybody else and cries all the time. This inconsistency becomes problematic at the body switching scenes; it seems that the male actor does not really know how to act when he plays her.
Some reviewers here objected to the outdated portrayal of women, how the female lead gets to be pursued by her rich suitor, even though she has told him not to several times, how he keeps grabbing her arm and holding her down. This did not bother me at all, first, because I think to be pursued like that by a (good-looking) guy who is obsessed with you is a fulfilling fantasy for most women, and second, because the scenes where he grabs her and holds her down are really innocent, he just wants to hold her hands or hold her in his arms. The scenes where they watch the other sleeping from close up are just adorable. However, it seemed rather outdated to me that the female protagonist was shown to be appalled by the idea of physical intimacy before marriage. I get it, conservative audiences like the idea of no sex or anything like that before marriage, but at least she could have been tempted. Here, at least the guy (almost) acts like a normal young man in this respect, unlike in CLOY. Her asexuality also means that the body switching scenes become very chaste and awkward, as if she is not interested in the male body she temporarily inhabits at all.
There is also a storyline featuring an aging K-pop star, a plagiarism scandal and a young composer, but I didn't understand half of it, perhaps I was too distracted to follow the subtitles by the Emo hairstyles, which must have been very trendy ten years ago but seem a bit ridiculous now...
I agree that the evil mother character was way overdone.