"
My Mighty Princess", directed by
kwak Jae-Yong, revolves around a mighty female character who can beat up powerful martial art professionals -- if she wants to. The problem is that she does not bother to show off her awesome power even though the fate of the secret marital art community in Korea hangs in the balance. After all, she's a college student and she's busy chasing after handsome guys.
Director Kwak's new romantic comedy, which relies heavily on the visual effects of wire actions, starts from a cartoonistic assumption that a host of ancient martial art practitioners are living in the city of Seoul without revealing their true identity.
The movie's heroine So-hui (played y
Sin Min-ah) not only belongs to this secret community but also comes with a special privilege. Her father was one of the four masters who once flexed their martial muscles in the secret community and her mother, who died when So-hui was young, was a top-rated swordswoman.
Despite the glorious heritage, So-hui's attention is placed entirely on Jun-mo (
Yoo Geon), a good-looking ice-hockey player who drives an expensive Suzuki motorcycle in and outside campus. So-hui, born with unusually powerful strength that often surprises her friends in college, wants to win the heart of Jun-mo by joining the ice hockey club, but his mind is steered toward someone else.
So-hui's father (
Choi Jae-seong) enlists help from Il-young (
On Joo-wan), a quirky, motorcycle-obsessed college student who practiced martial arts together with So-hui when they were young kids. Nonetheless, So-hui does not pay much attention to her childhood buddy Il-young because she is competing hard to become Jun-mo's girlfriend.
This silly set-up, which might please and entertain high school audiences to some extent, takes an outrageous turn when So-hui's father is attacked by Black Tiger, an evil character with sly eyes and an embarrassing smirk. All of a sudden, So-hui transforms into a martial art super heroine who seems at once innocent and powerful.
A powerful female character and pathetically weak male counterparts? This sounds familiar, especially when you have watched "
My Sassy Girl", a blockbuster hit by the same filmmaker that brought
Jeon Ji-hyeon and
Cha Tae-hyeon to Asia-wide stardom.
"
My Mighty Princess", as the title unequivocally suggests, follows Kwak's trademark formula: a strong female character and a weaker male counterpart get romantically and comically involved with each other.
Unfortunately,
Sin Min-ah is not
Jeon Ji-hyeon. Sin looks charming and innocent throughout the film, but except for her flying tricks, there is few ground to tout her as a categorically domineering character that was achieved by Jeon.
There is a serious problem with male characters in "
My Mighty Princess", as well. Both Yoo Gun and
On Joo-wan might pass as handsome boys who can wow high school (or younger) girls, but neither of them shows off a discernable cinematic quality that is comparable to what
Cha Tae-hyeon did for "
My Sassy Girl".
Yoo Geon's handsome boy character, who falls in love with a far older police officer, is absurd at best, and
On Joo-wan's Il-young fails to spark any meaningful interest as a multilayered character, even though he supposedly holds the key to unlock the petty and predictable mystery surrounding the decades-long strife in the martial art community.
As with Kwak's other romantic comedy films, "
My Mighty Princess" falls into a tear-jerking melodramatic climax that is utterly devoid of fresh inspiration and dramatic impact.
The movie will hit theaters on June 26 after a delay of more than two years, and it seems like that distributors had had many valid reasons to delay the release. The film's flimsy storytelling, a bland mixture of comedy and martial art sequences and poor characterization are hardly a promising recipe for box office.
One positive aspect, though, is that the film demonstrates a fairly high level of wire action sequences helped by DTI, Korea's top computer graphics company, and
Dion Lam, a renowned martial art director from Hong Kong.
By Yang Sung-jin
