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When I think about it, I’ve actually seen a lot of Jang Geun Suk’s oeuvre, so maybe that’s the main problem I have with him – overexposure. Because despite his weird grimaces, I think he can carry a drama, and he can be funny – sometimes, even on purpose. One of his films that I enjoyed was Baby and I (Agiwa Na), which had the wacky, but mostly disturbing, premise of a bratty teenager who suddenly finds himself saddled with a kid he never knew he had. Cue the poop related hijinks.
Jang plays Han Jun Su, a high school heartthrob whose playboy ways land him with a kid, Woo Ram (Mason Moon), to raise. There isn’t much more to the plot than witnessing an immature kid grow up when he is forced to take care of a younger kid, but it was a fun movie nevertheless. And Jang Geun Suk even made me cry, in a good way, so that’s something. He also worked with some of his Hong Gil Dong castmates (or maybe it was just one), so maybe I also enjoyed this movie because of my Hong Gil Dong goodwill. I haven’t seen any of Jang’s other movies, but I was thisclose to watching his Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do because it was based on an internet novel written by Guiyeoni. She also wrote Romance of Their Own/Temptation of Wolves, which became one of the strangest films I have ever seen (it seems so vintage now). Even though I liked it, I still don’t know if that entire movie was a dream sequence or not.
Even though the concept of a teen dad who has to beg women for milk might serve as a depressing cautionary tale to young love, Jun Su still gets his own 4-D love interest, Kim Byul, played by actress Kim Byul (who has since changed her name to Song Ha Yoon, and is currently in the crime thriller drama Ghost). I actually liked her, the actress and her character, and her penchant for wearing chicken suits and littering her school desk with bric-à-brac didn’t seem too much like forced quirkiness, but just a really organic part of her personality. And she wasn’t just a love interest – because she came from a large family, she was a great babysitting resource as well. I see that Jun Su learns to multitask once he has a child.
More than the creepy teen pregnancy issues, I think the main agenda the movie tried to push was an anti-adoption one, or at least, an anti-foreign adoption policy. That made me a little uncomfortable – that’s not really the kind of stuff I’m looking for in a feel-good teen flick. I think this was based on a manga, Baby and Me by Marimo Ragawa, but the plots sound so different that this was definitely more of a loose interpretation. But the baby of the title was pretty cute. Mason Moon has developed quite the following, so maybe like father, like son.
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