Ko So-young, left, stars, in "Project Makeover" ("Go Go Sister"), a film about a journey to the past to correct a love choice.
Time travel in movies has been done. We have watched so many of these films now, including the Hollywood adventure "Back to the Future" and its sequels and the local melodrama "My Mother, the Mermaid", that the idea has lost its freshness.
But it's obviously still a tempting offer.
Directed by Kim Chang-rae, the new romantic comedy "Project Makeover" ("Go Go Sister") (Oniga Kanda) tempts the audience with an interesting hypothetical: Would your life be better if you could change your first love?
The film revolves around a 30-year-old woman who goes back to 1994, when she was a high school student.
Na Jung-ju (played by Ko So-young) blames her misery on her failed first love, a man who left her and became a famous singer.
One day, she meets her high school friend Oh Tae-hun (Lee Beom-soo), who had a big crush on her. He is now a successful businessman. She regrets that she didn't go out with him.
But she has a mysterious chance to travel in time. She decides to go see herself at 18 to prevent the crush on the playboy and to persuade her younger self to date the future businessman.
But things are not as easy as Jung-ju plans. She bonds with the teenage version of herself, an easy task, as they have a lot in common, but the free-spirited teenager resists control. Despite her efforts to change the past, events seem destined to follow their course.
Compared to other films, "Project Makeover" ("Go Go Sister") takes the audience into the past clumsily. The film lacks the fancy car of "Back to the Future" series or the mysterious accident of "My Mother, the Mermaid".
Jung-ju enters the past with the help of a mysterious computer program, which appears from out of the blue.
The development of the story is also clumsy. Many scenes seem unconnected to other parts of the movie. Strangely, however, the film does manage to arrive at its destination.
The moral of the story is that there are things that you just let go. The past is not something you can change; it's your job to make your life better by working hard in the present.
This could sound like a cliche, but it is also persuasive, probably because the film is not overly instructive. The audience is free to draw its own conclusions.
The film has another strong point _ the past. If you are now in your 30s and you spent your youth here in Korea, the movie will feed your nostalgia. When Jung-ju arrives in her past, the world is full of nostalgia-provoking items _ songs by hip-hop boy band DEUX, Guess jeans and pagers.
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