Korean Movie Review: Please Teach Me English (2003)

Yet another Korean movie review!   

Many, if not most Korean comedies are pretty 'throw away'.  They have some cheap laughs and entertain you for about 2 hours, but you know going into it that they're not going to be great films.  Many of them are pretty cookie-cutter and cliched,  and ultimately within a few days you forget most of the details...  

So I had very muted expectations watching ' Please Teach Me English',  a 2003 comedy with the Korean title ' 영어완전정복 '.  My expectations were quickly reinforced, the film is not going to win any awards,  it tells the story of a plain, boring worker in a local government office who is forced by her boss to take English lessons for her work.    The comedy takes place in the classroom situation and in her eventual crush on her classmate,  dubbed 'Elvis'.     The film is unique from the average Korean comedy in that one of the major characters is actually played by a westerner (an Australian actress) and also that the comedic dialogue is at least partially in English (poor English, but English none the less).

I enjoyed the film for a few reasons,  one was based on my experience living overseas and interacting with people very similar to the characters in the movie (I never lived in Korea, but its not that different than the situation in Japan...),   and the second reason was the performance by the female lead, Lee Na-Young (이나영).  The best I can describe her character is a Bridgette Jones type...  totally geeky and clumsy, but you can't help but root for her.  I thought she was terrific. 

In fact the actress is quite attractive in real life, but unlike the typical 'ugly duckling' story, in this film she never becomes the swan, she stays in character, she doesn't need to suddenly become super hot to get the guy and live happily ever after  ...which I think is great and unique. 

I'll give it a 6/10,  which includes a +2 from Lee Na-Young herself. :-P