This is bad.

It's hard to imagine that someone would agree to finance this, so I can only conclude someone in the production had a rich relative.

The BL couple is cute, and you'll have an interest in them - especially the character Tokyo, who is extremely adorable. It isn't given enough screen time.

The main couple would have been OK with a better FL. I've been referring to the man as "bargain basement Zon" because he's like a washed out version of Tommy Sittichok in Why RU. The FL's acting is not great, but the writing for her character is so bad I'm not sure anyone could have pulled it off. Her interruption of her brother's relationship and her reasoning for doing it are so bizarre and out of character that it really slams the brakes on the show and almost everyone in the comments section wanted her to die horribly thereafter.

It's like BL writers have some irresistible compulsion to insert a toxic female into every single BL romance that exists, at exactly the same moment in the series. I'm becoming convinced there's only one BL writer, and she's either suffered brain damage that makes her write the same thing over and over, or she's being held at gunpoint by a homophobic madman. "I SAID MORE ACCIDENTAL KISSES! PUT IN AN EVIL GF! NEEDS MORE SCREECHING LADYBOYS!" In any case, whenever I'm watching a series, I need to take anti-anxiety medication before the 3rd to last ep, because I just know a misogynist stereotype will materialize to torpedo the ship.

Anyway, the other plot element that's this series' schtick is the old woman with Alzheimer's. Yes, Alzheimer's is super-funny, right? Let's pick a terrible disease that almost everyone has personally experienced within their families in a painful way. But surely they dealt with this sensitively, right? "I SAID BELITTLE PEOPLE WITH TERRIBLE AFFLICTIONS!" I kept hoping she was pretending to be senile in a plan to get all the ships sailing, but no.

The show is not 100% terrible. The production quality is reasonably good, and most of the acting is at least passable. If you're bored and it's Thursday, it might be worth it to watch this and ff through everything that's not Tokyo/Tam, because they are cute. And BB Zon is sexy and cute, too. Hopefully some of these people will get better roles in the future.

Leia Mais

Beautiful short story

This is a fairly economically-written story in which more happens than in some longer series, and with an emotional authenticity often sorely lacking in BL.

The reactions of the three characters are very realistic and age-appropriate, experiencing heratbreak, longing, jealousy, love, and especially loyalty in non-pathological ways. Loyalty is an important theme in the story, prioritizing it over attraction, and making it a primary characteristic to be attracted to. Poon has a fight with his best friend in which he even punches him, but it doesn't break up their friendship because the best friend understands Poon's motivation and even values it. It's obviously wrong to hit someone, but nobody, especially high school boys, has perfect self-control, and he apologizes and they discuss it like good and mature people.

It's a really beautiful story, wonderfully acted by very attractive boys and well filmed and edited. My only criticism is that there is too much flashback for such a short story. One is excusable as it's from the previous part, but there are others that are from the previous scene, which is tiresome and unnecessary. Also, Rachmaninoff needs royalties for the score, but it works well with the story.

I can highly recommend this - Mind Trio is batting 1,000 at this poiint.

Leia Mais

I wanted to love this so badly.

There is so much about this that's wonderful. The acting and cinematography are excellent.

That's a lot - and it's why I gave this a 7 instead of the 5.5 'suggested' rating. I like that this takes a more cinematic and sophistic approach to making a BL - this is not like a mainstream series where everyone is fantastically rich - the characters even take a train!

There is no way to escape comparison to I Told Sunset About You, which is another ambitious production about similar themes - I could watch that 100 times and was enthralled for every minute of it. The Yearbook was something to endure.

It's slow. I don't mind slow-pacing during scenes - in fact I prefer a scene that develops. The problem isn't the slowness of scenes, although they're really, really slow, it's the overall slowness of the plot and the reliance on flashbacks to fill time. I understand this is an expansion of a school project. It's not so much an expansion as an inflation. You will see the same scenes flashed back to many, many times - like a dozen or more - I'm not kidding. There are flashback scenes that have their own flashback scenes - I'm not joking, it happens many times.

Within scenes, the dialog is spoken in this unnatural slow and halting manner, with very long pauses and staring to the point that Bite Me seems rushed in comparison. Everyone moves very slowly, too. Like 90 year-olds. Heavily sedated 90-year olds. There's a scene were Nut takes a photo out of a drawer and sets it up on his desk. He opens the drawer so slowly I thought maybe he was afraid there was a bomb in it, then withdraws the photo really slowly, slowly places it on his desk, then writes a pointless letter that takes 5 minutes, and then he gives up and just calls Phob instead.

There is no point to this story. It's not about loss - there was an opportunity to delve into different types of loss and how you move on, but nope, just slow talking and flashbacks.

There is a scene where the main characters appear to have sex - offscreen, which is fine. But then the next day they behave exactly as they did before - there was no impact on their relationship, no discussion, it just disappeared and never happened again, and they resumed interacting like bro's. They even woke up fully-dressed and not even cuddling.

A little over halfway through, a character has to go somewhere for a few hours to take care of something life-changing. And the series comes to a screeching halt and there are three episodes that are almost entirely flashback. If you're expecting a fluffy ending, you're not getting one. It's not a sad ending, it's not really a happy ending, it just ends, as if the crew said "f@#$ it, this isn't going anywhere, let's just stop here." That sounds exaggerated, but you'll think I understated it if you watch this series.

The life-changing event is fairly dramatic, and it does result in a character signing a song for the other character (over the phone, all to flashbacks, including a flashback to someone else singing the same song - and with vocals, not just visual). No hug, no "I'm here for you", certainly nothing to indicate there's any romantic connection. The song isn't about loss or moving on, it's expression of unrelated feelings that he could have communicated 10 years prior but somehow never did, even though they had sex.

This is not a BL. It's a bromance. There is a kiss, once, miss-it-if-you-blink, and the main pair do seem to love each other, but it feels to me that it was a bromance with one kiss thrown in to make it a BL so they could market it to us and Mean's fan base. This feels like an attempt at a BL by straight guys who think m/m love is gross and so it's barely in here. This is the BL equivalent of interior "decor" that's all white walls, black leather furniture and a huge TV for video games and watching sports.

There is more time spent by straight characters discussing girls they like than there is of the main characters discussing their feelings for each other, which, incidentally, they do not do, ever, even once. They sing their feelings, which is nice (although twice it's over the phone), but we needed to see them interact like lovers. After high school, the main pair were rarely even in the same room together. Except in flashbacks.

------------------

Story: 3. Superficial, lazy, manipulative, and designed to make sure the main characters interact as little as possible.

Acting: 9. The delivery of dialog was terrible, but that's not the actors' fault - they otherwise did an excellent job showing us what they feel, which makes the endless flashbacks mystifying. Why hire such good actors if you're not going to let them do the heavy lifing?

Music: 8.5. This was well-done. The original lyrics were good without being carried away, the singing was what you'd expect from non-professionals, although someone who's a better singer should have been cast for Phob. Anyway, one of the series' better qualities.

Rewatch value: 1. If you held a gun to my head, I would still not sit through this again. It's probably worth watching once, but there's nothing that would draw me back.

Leia Mais

Truly Awful

I usually try to be tolerant of low-budget productions, especially when they have heart. This doesn't.

The story is boring, the acting poor. The main character has no charm or charisma, and the main pair has no chemistry at all. In their kiss scene they somehow managed to look like they were sexually harassing each other.

There is one bar of music, and it's played over and over until you want to poke out your own eardrums.

The female characters are just excruciating. There's a woman on the staff of the resort that, and I hesitate to use words like this, behaves like a shameless slut in heat. Whenever she's in Migo's presence, her tongue is hangling out, she writhes all over the doorframes and walls, rapes him with her eyes, and is so completetly inappropriate that any guest with any self-respect would have left the resort immediately, and probably called a mental institution to come collect her. Or maybe a vet to put her down. Later, when the mains get together, she shoots them such OTT evil-eye, right there in public when she's at work and people are trying to eat, that you have to ask why someone doesn't punch her out. Or tie her in a sack and toss her in the well. It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but it's really impossible to overstate how revolting this character is.

There are series that frustrate me, disappoint me, or bore me. This one somehow managed to do all three and make me angry as well. This could possibly be the worst BL ever. There are BLs that are of lower-quality production, there are BLs that are naked cash-grabs, and there are BLs that are so bad that they're good - but this one is somehow aggressively awful in a way I don't think I've seen before.

It's a struggle to find nice things to say, but I feel I should. So: the main character, while unappealing in almost every way, looks surprisingly good shirtless. Also, Migo de Vera has a beautiful body and you see a LOT of it - including butt shots, a rarity in BL. That's all I can think of.

Leia Mais

Good, but some wasted potential

This is a different kind of BL, with complex characters that aren't caricatures or archetypes like most BL characters. Even the "villain" isn't a villain.

The acting is superb, although a bit uneven, with Kris & Porsche playing Dome and Vee with a searing intensity in a forbidden love storyline, Boom & Jump a bit one-note but cute as Saen and Aii, and Tae & Suar in the middle as Fah and Thorn.

The cinematography and art design are the best I've seen in a BL, including I Told Sunset about You - it was stunning enough to carry me through the weaker parts of the story.

Which brings me to to the biggest problem with the series, which is the writing and pacing. The story is too ambitious for 12 episodes and too much was attempted. Unfortunately, the expedient chosen to get through it was time jumps. The jumps totally deflated the most exciting couple, Dome and Vee, and their story just died and I lost interest in it. They skipped over all the key scenes, like Dome & Vee's respective denouments with Pan, parting for Saen & Aii, etc.

The final drama between the main couple was insufficiently set up, and while the emotion and charactization was complex, realistic, and well-executed, Thorn made too many decisions that didn't make very much sense for his character - there were things he did that are understandable in the moment, but not in the long term, like the communications breakdown with Fah.

And the finale was a huge disappointment - an entire episode where nothing happened wasted on what could have been much-needed development for the secondary couples. In the end, the total lack of passion between the characters undermined any sense I had that anyone was in love - they all interacted like friends, with pecks on the cheek going where a love scene belonged. Considering how dark and mature the themes of the series were, the junior-high level of the romance (and that's being generous) made the whole series fall flat for me. Dome & Vee's final scene is a LOL product placement - it was mouth-hanging-open shocking to see such an electric couple ending in such a pathetic way.

I'm not saying there needed to be sweat-soaked love sex scenes - Vee & Dome had scenes were they weren't even touching that could burn a house down (before they became wet cardboard). But at no point did any of the other two couples, or Vee & Dome after the first time jump, feel like romantic pairs. Fah & Thorn feel like their roles were written for brothers, not lovers, and Saen & Aii's romance was primary school from beginning to end, with Aii never ceasing to act like he was afraid of getting cooties from Saen. If you replaced them with 8-year olds, the story would work just the same.

I still gave it a high rating, but there's no excuse for this not being a 10 with all the superlative ingredients it had.

Story: 7 - High points for complex characterizations, but poor marks for continuity and failure to bring stories to convinving conclusions and jumping over resolutions with lazy and enervating time-jumps.

Acting: 9 - Of all the actors, the only ones that I long to see again are Kris & Porsche, preferably together. The others were decent, and would probably outshine most run-of-the-mill BL actors, but suffered in comparison to that superb pair.

Music: 7 - nothing special but did it's job.

Rewatch: 5 - I would rewatch Vee & Dome, but that's about it.

Overall: 8.5 This is higher than the suggested score, but there's no rating for "production values", and this was an 11/10. I would have rated it a 9.5 or 10 up until the first time jump, which led to a huge dropoff for the series - this was a very unfortunate decision.

Leia Mais

Well, that happened.

I saw the uncut version on GagaOOLala.

I really wanted to like this - and at first I did. The selfie scene at the beginning is profoundly funny, and the OTT campy action early on is really entertaining. But then it just bogged down and became dull. For some reason, Asian BLs can't help themselves - they all have to revolve around women, in this case a pair of vampire hunters who serve as mannequin villains, who take up way too much screen time. They could have been completely eliminated from the story and the struggle centered on rival vampire clans. I presume there was a producer somewhere who read the script and said "too gay. Put in hot chicks" as if crowds of straight men are going to watch this.

It is definitely BL, and it's not read-between-the-lines-of-bromance - it's explicitly BL. But it's not prominent. If you're planning to watch it for that, I would pass.

This was disappointing. Maybe it's worth watching the first 20 minutes or so for the campy fun, but after that there's not a lot of reward for your time. It needed to cut loose and go seriously OTT. It feels a little like that was the plan, and for some reason th brakes were hit. It's too bad this wasn't Japanese.

Leia Mais

Strangest BL I've ever seen. But not unwatchable.

This was better than the previous series the crew produced - it was insane, but entertaining. I'm not quite sure if it's supposed to be a comedy, or if it just ended up that way. I think it's a light-hearted horror/supernatural BL?

The acting is not great, but it's good enough for the concept, which is something new, for sure - but a bit repetitive.

They've really got to improve the editing. Considering the scenes were static, there shouldn't be obvious shifts to a different take. Also, if a guy is walking down a hill, you can just show if for a few seconds - you don't have to show him walking ALL the way down, although if that was supposed to be comical with the intense evil-sounding music playing in the background, it worked. In general the shots are too long, and it robs the action of its momentum.

For example, it is film "vocabulary" to have people under enchantment walk slowly. Usually in very old movies - nowadays even zombies are really fast. Another way that is often shown is by making the character's eyes turn red. But you don't have to do both. There is a LOT of people with red eyes walking slowly in this (and the contacts were making the poor short hot guy cry - that must have been painful). Why not have their eyes turn red and just walk normally?

The fairy using magic scene was way too long - we get it. about 5 seconds suffices to make the point.

Anyway, I did have fun watching it, but it won't be for everyone. You'll know if you like it or not in the first episode, so if you're in the mood for something insane, give it a shot.

Leia Mais

Not bad, but should have been better.

There are so many good elements to this story, but too many problemmatic ones were tossed in, and it dragged down the overall quality of the series.

The acting is good. Pak, playing the main character, Kaitoon, is very good and charming. Gun, who plays Valen, is also good - he's playing a surly good-for-nothing trying to be better, but you can connect with his awkwardness and inability to communicate affection in a competent adult manner, and you definitely feel his attraction to Kaitoon. The rest of the cast is good. The overall quality of the production is good, and the subtitles are great.

But - the central love triangle is not at all enjoyable. First, there is too huge a gap in Kaitoon's suitors' desirrability. Valen is obviously a good and giving person, but he's too immature to be Kaitoon's bf, and Non is more or less the textbook definition of a perfect bf. Being attracted to someone flawed happens, but Kaitoon is potrayed as too level and knowing what he wants and needs to chose Valen. Second, watching people sit sadly after being stood up is awful and really unpleasant to watch - and it makes the stand-upper really unappealing.

The secondary couple is not bad, and for once, there's actually a reasonable explanation for someone ghosting the other for his own good, but it's still an overused and not entirely convincing device. There is something that makes it look like they will have a love triangle too, but if you look up the ages of the actors, you'll see it's not possible. I hope. Because eww. Also, the secondaries are not integrated into the main story at all, so it's like a different series stapled to the main one for no apparent reason.

The pacing at times really bogs down and too much time is spent on unimportant things, or drains the life out of substantial elements.

There are some subtle touches, like Kaitoon refuses someone's attempt to wipe his lip and says he'll do it himself, which is leveraging a tired trope in a symbolic way - I liked that. They also made fun of product placement when Valen says to his sister, "you look beautiful today. What skincare product are you using?" which would normally lead to a placement, but she tells him to go away.

But all-in-all, the series needed more focus - there are too many plot ideas (and some are tropes) thrown in, like the BL photo which leads to screaming fujoshis. Was that necessary in any way? What did it do to drive the story forward? Thankfully we only had to endure fujoshis for half a minute. And I will say it's nice for there to be a total absence of the usual predatory and pathetic trans/effeminte gay characters screeching and pawing at every half-attractive man.

I also appreciate that they chopped the series into two so that the second part can be filmed after COVID rather than stapling together a miserable and infuriating ending like Top Secret in Love did.

I'm hoping the second half is more focused and stops torturing the most appealing person on the show. It just makes us sad, and serves no real purpose.

I would recommend this, but not strongly. If you're finding you don't like it after a couple of eps, you are probably never going to like it and should consider dropping it.

Leia Mais

This is not great, but it's watchable with judicious fast-fowarding.

I'll start with the bad to end on a positive note, because there are some fine qualities to this.

The acting is bad (but the main couple are good enough). A lot of the side characters are obviously not played by actors. There are so many that few of them got much screentime, so I don't want to be too harsh.

The script is bad. It's so full of extraneous nonsense that it makes this hard to endure and almost submerges the theme of the story, which is good (more on that below). Drowning twice, both times taking only 15 seconds and in 3 feet of water while all your friends stand around watching because they don't want tor ruin their outfits is OTT ridiculous - there's a point to which you can suspend disbelief, but it was LOL absurd the first time, and when the exact same thing happened again, complete with friends standing around watching, it was just an eyeroll and a sigh.

Enemies-to-lovers will always work as a plot device. But from visceral hatred to best friends in an instant is not credible. This was a fairly short series, but there was plenty of time to do this more smoothly if so much runtime hadn't been wasted on pointless side characters.

Speaking of which, I'm getting to the point where I will not watch anything with a pathetic trans character, even if Allen Caiguoa is in it. Trans women are not pathetic, and they have enough obstacles to deal with without a supposedly friendly space being so cruel. And definitely no more fat-shaming. To be fair, Roi's surrogate mom is a relatively positive character, which was welcome.

Also, there's a lot of overt and implicit homophobia in this (and BL in general). There's a scene where someone expresses his interest in the main character, who reacts so violently it's hard not to attribute it to homophobia. It was strange and out of nowhere. It was an overly direct and ungraceful pick-up attempt, but not something to wake the entire resort over. Also, does the seme always need to be straight? For that matter, does there always have to be a seme and an uke? This dynamic is heteronormative, and making the dominant/top "man" of the story more-or-less straight, what is that saying? Why are the effeminate gay men always loud, pathetic, and predatory?

90% of the finale was consumed by unnecessary flashbacks. They are making a revelation, which should have taken 30 seconds at morst. Do you remember The Sixth Sense? That was a much more complex revelation and it was covered with mere seconds of flashback, and was far more powerful as a result. Here it was tiresome and greatly diminished the emotional impact.

How many times can you use the "just about to kiss but interrupted by someone even though it's 3 in the morning and you're in a secluded place" device to get out of having the characters get phyiscal?

The sound and camerawork is terrible. Even scenes that were lit by natural light were botched. If you don't know how to do something, find someone that does. Film professionals are very generous.

On to the good. As bad as this is, there is a lot of heart and effort that went into it.

The basic story idea and overarching plot are quite good - the suicide element was brought in and covered without being suffocating or taking over, and tied nicely into the ending.

The two main actors are good enough - not dynamic, but not embarassing or cringey, and with enough ability and charisma to pull off a couple you care about.

All-in-all, this series was good conceptually but let down by execution. It's heart almost saved it, but in the end it was disappointing - but it did leave me wanting to see more from this production crew. I think they can accomplish great things if they put a little more work into developing technical skills, and put a little discipline into the screenwriting.

Leia Mais

Great sequel.

A fine sequel to the original, following the theme but with a stand-alone story. You actually don't need to watch either to understand the other, but it's better seeing them together.

I'm surprised at how well we get a sense of their characters in such a short work. I'd like to see both these guys again, especially WinWin.

Half a star deducted for the stupid triple-take that BLs always do at important moments which only drains them of emotion. That trope needs to be taken out to a field and shot. Then buried, dug up, and burned. And then buried again. But other than that, this was an enjoyable watch.

Leia Mais

A pleasant watch

This was really sweet and I enjoyed watching it. I thought Cheng Chang Fan was a standout as Kane (I dont know why the subtitles call him that) and Alan Song as Soda was great too.

I was a little surprised that what I thought was the main pairing ended up taking a backburner to the side couple, and I ended up wishing they had paired the two most appealing actors instead of what they did. I didn't really feel the love from David Chiu as Sung Yi Fan - his performance was too cold with not enough subtle hints about how he felt, except for the way he kept wiping frosting off Kane's face, which came off slightly creepy rather than cute.

Kane is a young man who wants to be a musician but is being suffocated by pressure to hide who he is, and I think the actor did a great job - he's one of those people that's way cuter when he's sad than when he's smiling and I just wanted to hug him all the way through this.

Soda is having pre-wedding jitters aggravated by trauma he's suffered from his parents' disastrous marriage, and the actor did a great job with one of the better-realized characters in this drama.

The production values are great, and all-in-all this was a solid BL, although it's probably not going to make anyone's Top 10 list. Unless you've only watched 10 BLs.

Leia Mais

This is really good and badly underrated

Let me start by saying I enjoy series with underlying meaning, which I find more rewarding to watch and more memorable. This is one of those, so maybe it appeals to me more than it does to most other people. If you're looking for fluff and cuteness, this is not the place - although if you want to see some of the best-acted love between two people you can find in BL, you'll get it here, and a lot of it. I don't mean sex, although Jesus Christ, I thought my monitor would burn out.

When I first started this, I thought it was going to be soft-core porn, which I was totally down for because the main pair are both smoking hot, and even hotter together. It's refreshing every once an a while to see an ML (Man Love!) instead of a BL - BLs don't usually display any raw male sexuality - it's usually the chaste fairy-tale kind of love, which there's nothing wrong with - but variety is a good thing.

So I was suprised not far in when all the layers starting slowly peeling back. It would be boring if I cover all of it, but one of the most common criticisms I've seen is that the stories of the inhabitants of the building don't intertwine, so I'll focus on that, but one point about the political undertones, which I've seen a lot of people describe as obscure: remember that this is for a Filipino audience, and for them, the Marcos era is not at all obscure - they are still living in the shadow of those times.

Regarding the residents: The purpose of the COVID couple is to underscore the transience of life - one moment a man has a beautiful and happy family, and the next they're gone. We have no time to waste - we shoud embrace love wherever we find it and don't let it go.

The purpose of the trans character is show us a person that has had a far more difficult and brutal life than the main pair, and whose self-actualization is much more difficult than theirs (because she has to transition to achieve hers), and yet she accomplishes this, putting aside what everyone else and society says while embracing and integrating her faith, and by drawing strength from her self-love and not depending on anyone else to become who she is.

These are lessons that Emil and Benjo fail to learn, and that's why they can't be together. They let external forces guide their decisions - is it wrong in the eyes of God? Society? Are they gay? Do they want to be gay? At one point they even receive the tacit blessing of Emil's mother and they still don't absorb the right lessons. They are not bad or stupid people, far from it - but they are not ready to be together at this point in their story.

The cinematography was excellent, the acting first-rate. There are long scenes with no dialog, where everything is expressed with just the way they're looking at each other - it's a breathtaking exercise in the power of subtlety, and it brought me to tears. They even got the legendary Beverly Salviejo to play Emil's mother to give the message extra power. She is wonderful, both moving and funny. The overall production quality is very good considering the budget.

The style is theatrical - it feels like a play. This is intentional, and it worked well for me, but some people found it distancing. This is a COVID story, but the pandemic is cleverly used to explore the themes of the series (mortality, the prisons we build for ourselves, et. al. Note that the quarantine is no barrier for Emil's mother and what that means) rather than being an end in itself (or worse, an excuse not to have to have any gay action) like in so many other BLs.

Give this a shot - if you aren't into it by the end of Ep 3, it probably isn't your thing.

Leia Mais

This is terrible! What happened?

The other reviews have rated this a 10, which makes my jaw hit the floor. I don't get it. Is it loyalty to the actors or something? This is the most boring and passionless BL I've ever seen.

The last episode (4) was discussion about the job performance of Thorn's secretary, shoe shopping, and that's pretty much it. Oh, and there's some guy who likes a guy who works at a cafe and they talk about fake getting lost for a few minutes.

The only noteworthy thing that happened is that after 7 years together, Type is jealous because his GAY boyfriend talked to a woman.

Who wrote this? How did one of the most zany and entertaining BLs we've had descend into something this totally lacking in life?

I like Mew and Gulf, but they're just phoning it in. Mew is sexy, period, but other than that the chemistry of the first season is gone. I guess it needed the power struggle between them, because here Tharn is just whipped and walks around saying "sorry" and "yes, dear" even though he's never in the wrong.

There's a love scene in the first ep that is LOL bad - a pure ripoff of a scene in a famous movie about a ship that sinks, which is an apt metaphor for this disaster.

The directing, cinematography, editing, set and costume design are all adequate but thorougly uninspired. Can we get Lhong back? At least then something interesting might happen.

I can only give the story a 1, because there isn't one. Rewatch value also gets a 1 because you'd have to hold a gun to my head to get me to rewatch any of this, and even then I'd have to think about it.

Leia Mais

Had promise but was disappointing.

I'll start with the bad and end on a positive note.

For this short a series, it took a little long to get into the meat of the story, which resulted in a rushed ending, which was insufficiently prepared and too abrupt. I don't mean the last 10 seconds (more on that below), I mean the behavior of Jack leading up to that. The ending twist was totally unprepared - there is no hint of it prior to it happening, so it comes off as a cheap trick rather than as an interesting plot development. It actual severs my interest in any further development of the story rather than generating it.

Jack's sudden change of personality at the end would have made sense it had been properly set up - but it wasn't, and he just turned into a dick, plus what Jack tells the person on the phone to do makes absolutely no sense - nobody would do that, they would just leave. This was a very clumsy setup for the last 10 seconds. Likewise, Jill's physical reaction to Jack's dickishness seemed a bit out of character. It didn't bother me on a moral level, but it was a bit abrupt for his character, who has been kind of pathetic up to this point.

Which brings me to Jill's character, which is so insecure and pathetic that it's very difficult to believe Jack would have any interest in the situation. Some insecurity can indeed be cute, but not an immature and clingy mess like Jill - especially in Jack's circumstances, I just didn't buy it. Maybe Mateo wasn't up to the task of making his character sympathetic, but I'm not sure many actors could have. ZK played his archetype to a tee, but that's still not a sympathetic character unless his arc makes him a good guy by the end. The result is I have no investment in this couple and think they don't belong together and are better off never seeing each other again. Also, if Jill knows the third character, apparently reasonably well, do they really have no social media connection?

Dramatically, to have Jack's transformation into an asshole AND the twist was too much. It should have been one or the other - having both sent the whole thing crashing to the ground and wiped out any of the themes this was trying to explore.

On the positive side, the production quality is probably the highest I've seen in a DYI production like this. The cinematography is good, the editing is disciplined, the sound is mercifully good, the subtitles were timely and well-written, The acting is good - I'm not as sure about Mateo, but he didn't have much room to shine playing a dud like his character. He certainly wasn't embarassing or cringy to watch. I think we've all had a Jack enter our lives at some point and ZK was perfect in the role, and on a shallow note, has one of the hottest bodies I've ever seen and is generous in showing it off.

Story: 4 - I would probably have given this a higher rating if not for Ep 8, which really ruined it for me.

Acting: 7 - This was pretty good, but I didn't really feel the Jill character, and neither actor got a chance to show much range due to the brevity of the series and the narrative issues.

Music: 8 - It was good. Not overpowering, not too repetitive, and fit the scenes rather than using the series to showcase someone's OST.

Rewatch Value: 3 - I wouldn't rewatch this, but I might revisit all the ZK shirtless scenes. (I'm shallow.)

Overall: 6.5 - I would have given this a 7.5 or 8 if it hadn't been for the last ep.

Leia Mais

Cute and Entertaining

I'm very confused by the reviews of this series. I'm not sure what is expected in terms of character development - these are all grown adults and don't need to go through puberty or come to terms with their sexuality like virtually ALL Thai dramas which are just variations on a theme. I thought all the characters were well-drawn. Oldest brother is a control-freak who tries to be cold like his father trained him but is actually a very loving person, even if he shows it by kidnapping people and locking them in his closet. Middle brother is kind of useless but sweet (e.g. when he soaks his hands in freezing water then dries them before placing them over his friend's forehead so he will be cool but not get wet, which is sweet but stupid). Etc. I think maybe because this isn't romantic in the standard way, e.g. they are a bit physically rough with each other, it didn't appeal to everyone. But if you're looking for a single-sitting watch that's funny, cute, sweet, with lots of attractive men, I'd recommend this. If you're looking for a Thai BL drama, maybe you won't like this.

Leia Mais