200 Pounds Beauty at the Fantasia Film Festival

Movie Reviews
200 Pounds Beauty at the Fantasia Film Festival
By Al Kratina
July 15, 2007 - 21:01

Writer(s): Yong-hwa Kim, Hye-yeong No, Yumiko Suzuki
Starring: Ah-jung Kim, Jin-mo Ju, Yong-geon Kim, Dong-il Song
Directed by: Yong-hwa Kim
Running Time: 120 minutes
Release Date: 2006, South Korea
Distributors: Km Culture Co. Ltd
Genre: Romantic Comedy

Hollywood has long found Asian cinema to be a lucrative source of remake material. When something from the Far East strikes their fancy, American studios show no hesitation in buying the film, stripping it of its unique and identifiable features, removing most of the tentacle-based intercourse and shrieking pink-haired comic relief side-kicks, and sanitizing it for US audiences. Thankfully for the studies, with South Korean comedy 200 Pound Beauty, the makeover will be relatively painless, since it’s one Timbaland-produced soundtrack album away from being an MTV Movie Award winner already. A few days in a dubbing booth and some color correction so the more patriotic viewers don’t get too confused by all the Asians, and this movie should be ready for release all across the country.

Hanna is an obese woman with a beautiful voice who works as the real singer behind pop star Ammy’s lip-synching. Insecure about her appearance, she learns a painful lesson about true beauty, after she gets an extreme plastic surgery makeover and becomes a hugely successful performer in her own right. That lesson, of course, is that if you’re pretty on the inside you should cut your outside until you’re pretty there too, or you’ll die fat, poor and unappreciated. The performances in the film are engaging, and some of the jokes are perfectly timed, both by the actors and by director Yong-hwa Kim’s pacing. Still, there’s nothing in here that feels distinctly Korean, and the amusing bits wouldn’t be out of place in a particularly warm-hearted romantic comedy from Hollywood. Neither particularly disappointing nor particularly memorable, 200 Pounds Beauty might not catch the eye of any Hollywood producers, but that shouldn’t matter, because it’s ready to play here anyway

Rating: 5/10