There’s this make up store I pass by everyday and right
next to the entrance is the poster for 200 Pounds Beauty. Everything was
written in Korean so I couldn’t exactly decipher what it was about – I thought
maybe it was a promotion for some diet pills, but had to laugh at the extremity
of its marketing. It was only when I walked passed it with my friend one day
that I was told it was a movie.
I picked it up to watch but couldn’t exactly find the time to do so until last night. I was transferring some files into my phone but it was taking so long I decided to watch 200 Pounds Beauty as I waited. All I learned was that I shouldn’t transfer files in one huge block. The movie itself was quite ridiculous.
I watched about 15 minutes of it and I decided I didn’t like
it. I thought maybe it’s not that the movie was a bore per se or that I
disliked it, it may just be that relative to what I was watching before was far more exciting. Besides, nothing beats watching Born killing beats, so I decided to give the movie a
chance. I went on watching but I reached a point where it became an effort to
stay awake. After my files had transferred I decided I shouldn’t punish myself
like that and went straight to bed.
In short, it was predictable, disturbing (not in the moving way) and it wasn't as engaging. But that's just me. Obviously with its list of awards there are people out there who loved this movie.
Hanna owned a sensational star-quality voice but lacked the image to match it. Like the movie shamefully admits, our protagonist is morbidly obese weighing around 200 pounds. So how does she utilize her voice sans her enormous waistline? Work as a phone sex operator. Hah. That’s her night job. Her true profession is a singer. Not exactly the pop-star that we imagine, in fact, her only existence in the music industry is to be the shadow of pop-star, Ammy.
Ammy has no vocal talent but possessed the image of a
celebrity. During live performances, Ammy lip syncs to Hanna’s voice who sings
for her behind the curtains. We learn that in reality, Hanna is actually also the voice behind Ammy in all the songs in her album. Wow, imagine trying to pull that kind of fraud in real life.
In one particular concert, Hanna had been dancing along with
Ammy behind the curtains but due to her size, the makeshift platform she stood
on had collapsed. Their director and producer, Sang-jun, was quite concerned
for Hanna to her utter pleasure – even feeling giddy when he gives her a hug. At
this point we get the idea that Hanna has an extreme case of crushin’ going on
with her boss. We also feel that Sang-jun is not superficial and actually cares
for her. This gets Ammy jealous.
During Sang-jun’s birthday party, Ammy had sent Hanna a dress
under Sang-jun’s name for her to wear. It did not seem like a fitting dress but
because she thought Sang-jun sent it to her, she wore it nevertheless. Ammy
rocks up with the same dress looking mighty-finer than Hanna, to Hanna’s
embarrassment. She runs to the bathroom to seclude herself only to hear a
discontenting conversation between Sang-jun and Ammy. Basically he tells Ammy she
went too far; that yes, Hanna’s fat and ugly but possessed a beautiful voice that provided them their houses, cars and food,
whereas Ammy is sexy and beautiful but can’t sing to save her life. It certainly
was not something Hanna wanted to hear from the person she had a liking for. I take what I said about him not being superficial back.
Doom and gloom, there was nothing else left in life but to commit suicide. That is, until the phone rings and one of her phone sex clients wanted her service. It turns out she knew who this man was; a top plastic surgeon. Hey, let’s just get plastic surgery done instead of dying. I don’t condone either of these two but just the fact it’s decided in a wishy washy way is completely sending the wrong vibe.
After persuading/blackmailing the surgeon, she disappears from
the world for about a year, wrapped in a cocoon and eventually emerging as the
beautiful butterfly, Kim Ah-joong. She’s really pretty; she’s got that really
wide smile. But that transformation was totally unrealistic.
With no clothing to fit her, she steals one of the nurses’
uniforms and goes shopping. There was that one particular dress she had once wished she
could fit, so she went and bought the whole set all the while stopping traffic.
How do I love that cameo appearance by Lee Beom-soo?:
The story is that she got persuaded to buying a faulty car and drove around
with it only crashing into a taxi driver, Lee. One minute Lee is angry like a
dog, then next minute he sees the beauty in front of him and he’s like “Aw what?
Nah this is nothing, I’m fine…” with blood streaming down his face. A lot of it
too. Haha. Ryu Seong-soo also cameo-ed as the traffic officer and took her to
the station.
Hanna called her bestfriend Jung-min to come and collect
her, but Jung-min couldn’t recognize who she was at first. Jung-min tells her that
with her disappearing, she had put the whole production of Ammy’s album in
chaos. Now they’re holding auditions in search for someone to replace Hanna.
Eventually, Hanna gets the crazy idea of re-auditioning herself as a
Korean-American expat called Jenny.
During her auditions she tried her best to look "unfamiliar" while captivating everyone with her voice. She impressed them well enough that
she was given her own contract instead. Meanwhile, Ammy so desperately wanted to
release her album that she's going lengths to find Hanna, even guarding Hanna’s
father, who suffered Alzheimer’s, at the hospital in hope she'll come visit him.
Meanwhile, Hanna has earned new confidence to make advances
on her boss, trying to hilariously impress him while recording her song only to
have his eyes rolling. Why? Because she had the voice but didn’t have the
soul. He goes and shows Jenny a video recording of Hanna singing a song. Hanna
was an example of someone who transmitted the feeling of loving someone unlike
Jenny who cared too much about her looks. But this only made Jenny like
Sang-jun even more for accepting Hanna for who she is. Ok, maybe he's not superficial afterall.
That evening, Jenny asks Jung-min if she should confess to Sang-jun,
but Jung-min tells her that men think women who have gone under plastic surgery
are monsters. Next moment an argument erupts between the two. Jenny asks what
she would know about relationships, Jung-min says more than her. Jenny has gone
through something similar to what Jung-min is going through right now with her boyfriend and tells Jung-min to be careful. That guy she’s with might just be trying to sell her things and
isn’t really serious about dating.
That evening Jenny goes to see Sang-jun. Over dinner they
basically talk about whether plastic surgery is ok or not. He thinks it's not ok but
can see the reason why people do it. I think her motive here is to get him to
accept that plastic surgery is ok to justify her transformation. But he says
that the reason why Jenny stands out in the business is because she’s all
natural which only goes against her primary objective. He drops her off her house only
to find a stalker video recording her. Sang-jun goes and gives the stalker a
beating only to have Jenny defend her stalker. She tells Sang-jun that it's because she knows what it feels like not being able to confess her feelings and only watch from a distance.
Despite having a debut performance that day, Jenny goes and tracks the man who played with her bestfriend. Aw that’s cute. Sang-jun eventually finds her in the elevator where she had just beat the poor man down. Haha. Sang-jun goes to calm her and when the elevator opens up and many people were looking in, he takes her out from there as though she was the victim of the assault.
It’s performance time and they are late. They got to the
venue only minutes before her gig, and she is literally chucked out onto the
stage with her clothing ripped. But that didn't matter because when she sang, she blew the audience away! That song is
pretty catchy too. Soon, she was all over the internet, the tabloids etc. Sang-jun and Jenny goes and celebrate while chillin' at his place. That's when I turned the movie off. I'm not going to watch phone sex. Ew, so unnatural. Even the beginning of the movie was uncomfortable to watch.
Sorry if not finishing the summary seemed like a half-assed effort, but I seriously only watched it because I had nothing else better to do while waiting for my files to transfer. Plus, I am also a fan of Joo Jin-moo. When the transfer finished I realized I had no reason to suffer for the movie until the end. I heard the ending was quite nice though, just read the ending from wiki or something, heh. Even when I read it my opinion of the movie did not changed. It's still quite a predictable plot with a predictable ending.
I put this summary up because there are some issues I want to discuss about that movie. Just give me some time to put all my thoughts together and it will be up on here soon! :]
