Almost Love Review

At first glance Korean rom-com Almost Love looks like a sure fire winner. It reunites the stars of the hit My Tutor Friend, one of whom -- Kwon Sang Woo -- has gone on to become a massive star since then. The film is well shot and filled with loopy energy. A string of fantastical set pieces are grounded by charismatic performances by the enormously likable leads. And, most importantly in a film like this, the leads have an obvious chemistry and clearly love working together. So why does it feel like less than it should have been?

Kwon Sang Woo stars as Lee Ji-Hwan, a young man driven by only one thing: to become the greatest martial arts movie star since Jackie Chan. He trains in tae kwon do. He's working his way up the ladder with a local stunt crew. He even has his hair in a classic 70's Chan bowl cut. Lee's closest friend since childhood is Jin Dal-rae -- played with verve by Kim Ha-Neul -- an aspiring actress with a serious problem: she is horribly self conscious and can't perform in front of people.

Lee and Jin have the sort of easy, natural rapport that comes from having known someone most of your life. Only with each other are they completely at ease, completely free to express themselves truly. It's a rare sort of friendship and the sort that blinds the two of them to what is glaringly apparent to everyone else -- including Jin's boyfriend Young-hoon -- that the two of them are in love and likely have been since childhood. The introduction of a boyfriend for Jin and a girlfriend for Lee brings some friction to the relationship, forcing them to evaluate why the other being with someone else bothers them so much, but just as things appear to be coming to their inevitable happy ending tragedy strikes ...

Almost Love plays like a textbook example of the sort of crowd pleasing genre mashing that has driven the Korean Wave. Gleefully silly slapstick nestles up to a firm sense of nostalgia, a heaping helping of melodrama and some excellent comic action sequences clearly designed to show off Kwon's athleticism. It seems like everything should be perfect, but that clear design ends up being precisely the problem ...

Here's the thing: Almost Love is very clearly a manufactured film, a film designed point by point to exploit the talents and chemistry of its stars. It's hard to fault the makers for this when the film's stars are so damn cute but, unfortunately, while going point for point through all the bits that make girls swoon for Kwon while wanting to be Kim they neglected to write much of a story. Not only is there very little narrative here, there's not even much of an attempt at it and as a result Almost Love feels less like a complete story than it does some conveniently chronological sketches. While there are plenty of fantastic moments there is sadly little meat on the bones and when the final credits roll you can't help but feel that this was an opportunity missed.

The just released Korean DVD is typically strong. The transfer is quite good -- though there are some occasional little glitches on the print -- and anamorphic. The subtitles are inconsistent with some obvious grammatical problems but generally quite clear in meaning while also capturing the individuality of the characters. Packaging is excellent and the set includes a set of picture cards and a photo book. The second disc includes a host of special features, none of which are English subtitled.