#I've been meaning to draw Ji eun with her hair down for weeks now

[shinmiyovvi]

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[overthinkingkdrama]

Exit Review: Hotel De Luna

I'm trying to find a new, quick, neat review format that I can use when I don't really have enough to say to give you the whole review. But let's face it. This blog hasn't really been about reviews for a while now. A lot of that comes down to a shifting of my priorities these days. But I definitely am not ready to shut this blog down or stop doing what I've been doing for the past years, which is giving you my completely selfish commentary on Kdramas and how they make me feel.

That said, he's a review for a drama that ended back in September:

Synopsis

Hotel Del Luna  is the 12th full length drama written by the Hong Sisters, and like many of their other works is built around ghosts, folklore, and the sisters' particular brand of adapting previously existing stories into the classic Kdrama romcom format.

The drama tells the story of Jang Man Wol (Lee Ji Eun, aka IU), a materialistic, bad-tempered immortal woman who is the caretaker to The Inn of the Moon (rebranded Hotel Del Luna to keep up with the times) the last pit stop for the sprits of the dead before they pass on to the afterlife. She competently undertakes this task as a way to pay off some heavy duty bad karma from her tragic and bloody past. After centuries spent like this, world-weary Man Wol strikes a bargain to bring hardworking, scaredy-cat and Harvard grad, Goo Chan Seong (Yeo Jin Goo) to work as her hotel manager...very much against his will.

Whether he likes it or not, Chan Seong ends up acting as the human liaison for this luxurious ghost hotel, unlocking the secrets of its CEO and her mysterious past, as well as finding out what his connection is to this magical world.

Review

Story: Hotel Del Luna is essentially a gender swapped Beauty and the Beast set up, but with gods and ghosts. Which, is absolutely my cup of tea. And there's some pretty on the nose symbolism alluding to familiar Beauty and the Beast motifs (like enchanted undying flowers, lonely compelling monsters in high towers, well meaning peasant [boys] indentured to said monsters against their will, fancy staircases...)

But after the first couple of episodes the familiar set up recedes more into the background, and the format becomes a straightforward monster of the week, unlikely partners kind of drama. We've seen this before from the Hong Sisters. Hwayugi does it and Master's Sun does too, to a greater or lesser degree of success. This is clearly the Hongs' comfort zone, and they're good at it. I even noticed a couple story lines that had been taken and tweaked from previous dramas (specifically the spirit marriage plot line which is reused from Master's Sun) and it felt like they wanted to redo some old ideas with a bigger budget and a more experience. For the most part it works.

However, the drama suffers from some serious issues with pacing and tone. While the tone issues even out over time, there is a fair bit of one off slapstick humor which feels disconnected and rather corny in the context of the grander narrative. (Think My Girlfriend is a Gumiho's running fart gag, but classed up slightly.) But by far the pacing is the biggest problem Hotel Del Luna struggles with for the entirety of the run. It feels like the episodes are about a quarter filler. An issue that I feel could have been completely sidestepped had the Hong Sisters had only 1 hour to fill per episodes, rather than tvN's monstrous feeling hour and fifteen minute episodes which only grow longer as the run goes on.

Acting: IU owns this drama. This is Man Wol's world and we're all just living it in, ladies and gentleman. It's not just the fact that IU is consistently the most visually enticing thing in any given scene, she gives the drama vibrancy and life and you feel the lack whenever she's not on screen.

It's not that Yeo Jin Goo isn't a solid young actor, or even that he does a bad job in the drama. He doesn't do a bad job at all. It's just that Chan Seong isn't nearly as complex or dynamic as Man Wol. He's very much playing the uptight straight man to Man Wol's capricious and charismatic anti-heroine, and as such he seems to rather shrink beside her. If you want to see Yeo Jin Goo in a role that stretches him and lets him show of his dynamism, The Crowned Clown was his break out moment of the year. In HDL he is more or less another pretty accessory to hang from IU's arm.

Because the Hongs have been around forever they've also worked with everyone, this drama is a wealth of cheeky cameos and familiar faces and the extended cast makes the world feel full and lived in. There were a number of minor characters I felt invested in and enjoyed watching their plot lines play out.

But let's be real, IU is the single best reason to watch this drama.

Production: HDL is gorgeous to look at. The sets and costumes (especially Man Wol's outfits, which she changes at least 5 times an episodes) are downright luscious. We've come a long way from the distractingly chintzy makeup and costume design of Master's Sun. Hell, it even feels like we're lightyears ahead of Hwayugi, which was just two years ago. The style and motifs of HDL feel like they have a real identity, that they all come from the same place. Real love and thought went into the way the hotel looks and feels, as well as the way the characters dress and the supernatural world they live in.

Feels: The biggest thing about HDL that I felt let down by was the romance. It's not that it was bad, or in some way offensive. Quite the opposite really. The romance in HDL was just okay, just middle of the road. They had an excellent template (Beauty and the mofuckin' Beast y'all) to draw from, and two attractive, talented young people to helm the show and it just...didn't ignite for me. I've seen people praising the chemistry between the leads, and I'm sorry to say I just don't see it. It's okay, it's not leaping out of the screen for me. It's...functional. That's it, that's the big hairy gripe I've got with this show (besides the filler and typical tvN bloat).

What I loved about this drama was the heroine. I loved Man Wol and all of the joy and fun and sentiment and sorrow IU poured into her performance. I felt like IU was establishing herself in this role as a Park Min Young-type force in the drama world, who can carry entire productions on her shoulders. Man Wol in HDL isn't Ji An from My Mister--she can't be; she shouldn't be--but like Ji An she is allowed to be flawed, she allowed to be cruel and miserable and petty and sometimes even wicked. And I love that, because we don't get enough female characters like that, who are allowed to be wrong and yet redeemed, who are allowed to be shallow and bitter and do the selfish thing, and yet still learn from their mistakes and do better.

I like that Man Wol's gray morality isn't abandoned half way through the drama, and her arc isn't dropped or subordinated to Chan Seong's. She is the main character, the driver of the story, and that never changes throughout the run. The "happy ending" of the story is about her, not about the male lead. There's really nothing that annoys me more than a drama that builds up its lead as having a dark side, a checkered past, a hair trigger or a penchant for violence, and then refuses to show that side of the character to the audience for fear of making them unlikable. Female characters especially get this sort of treatment all the time. Man Wol is allowed to be an ambiguous character, she is allowed to fuck up and be forgiven, and ultimately be rewarded. And I think that's fabulous.

Would I recommend Hotel Del Luna? For fantasy fans, IU fans, and misguided Hong sisters completionists (that's mainly just me, I think) I would absolutely recommend HDL. It's definitely one of the better Hong Sisters offerings, stronger on its own merits than Hwayugi, and the closest yet in my opinion to reclaiming the glory of Master's Sun in terms of fantasy romance fun.  8.5/10