Cinderella and the Four Knights (2016)

Trapped in a castle!

This series was made in 2016 and it is feeling its age but it is still extremely watchable. It is a parody. The script was ok but sometimes seemed hemmed in by the predetermined plot lines. The actors were very good and Lee Jung-Shin was very good as a musician (obviously)
My main criticism was the siting of the family home in a huge house in the middle of nowhere and the ridiculous flooring plan inside. Very weird but all the cast seemed to cope with it! Still very enjoyable but don't take too seriously.
For all those reasons I've tried to score it taking into account when it was made!

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Slightly Cringey but no regrets!

Despite this show having quite a few cringey scenes, it still holds a grip in my memories and sometimes I am tempted to rewatch it. I tend to like reverse-harems, especially went here is an angsty tsundere character and/or a mischievous character and this has both who are typically at each other's throats. Love the flirting between the main 3 characters too...quite funny. After all it is a comedy too...plenty of goofy scenes. I'd say it's worth a watch if this is your kind of genre just skip the whole party/drinking scene....I found it unbearable cringey...idk if it was the acting or just the scene/script itself.

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B+ for effort, would recommend- SPOILER

I loved this drama, this was the first drama I watched with the cinderella trope and I loved it.

Of course, some scenes want to make me roll into a ball and pass away but altogether not bad compared to some dramas I watched. Now let me talk about things I didn't like.

1. The main couple was rushed - For almost half the drama I kept thinking she would end up with the SML, The first of the MLS she met at the bar, the guy that asked her to pretend to be his girlfriend, and the guy that overall had the best chemistry with her. so I was quite disappointed when I soon came to realize he was not the ML.

I feel like the fl and the ml had little to no chemistry, they weren't horrible together but tbh I hated the ml because he was such a fucking asshole to her. he spent half the story being such a bitch to her because the girl he has a crush on is butt hurt that someone else doesn't like her back ( the SML I was talking about )

Their relationship seemed like some sort of horrible last-minute plot twist idea. The whole love hexagon or sum was already confusing their relationship came out of nowhere.

2. THE HEXAGON WAS EVERYWHERE - It's not that it was some cringey love triangle, it was some reverse harem with only 2 logical ships.
The Kpop guy felt like her brother so not him
The secretary had little to no interaction with the fl
The ml was so fucking rude to her and he seemed to love the sfl more than he loved her. iI the sfl liked him back their relationship would be non-existent.

so that leave us with her and the sml( the only guy who i count as a good candidate and who she actually seemed to have chemistry with )

3. I hate the sfl - I just don't like her. From the moment I set my eyes on her I knew she would cause trouble, she wasn't a bitch or anything, and she didn't try to harm the fl tbh I feel like they would have had a cute friendship if explored more. but she was 99% of the arguments between the sml and the ml. ie

sfl tries to get ml to like her
sml doesn't care and says he likes fl
sfl gets emotional and runs to ml to cry even though she does not like him and probably should have caught on to the fact that he liked her.
ml gets mad at sml and fl for some reason

4. The characters -

The FL: I liked her, although her character is the stereotypical " girl who is strong but not too strong because she can't stand up for herself too much, that isn't girly " ill give her a 3.5/5 she was okay and could have been better without all the miscommunications and I liked how she sometimes minded her business.

The ML: Every time I see him I want to go on a rant but I won't because I don't care enough for him. I know it seems like I shitting on him here (i am ) but he and the fl were a good couple for the short time we got to see them together. would have liked it better if they had fully convinced us he fell out of love with the sfl. 3/5

The SML: As much as I liked him with the fl he was kind of an asshole to the sfl. and as much as I don't like her I feel like she deserved better than to have ended up with him. 3/5

The SFL: She needs to boast her self-esteem more she shouldn't have ended up with the sml. tbh the ml was better for her 3.2/5

The kpop idol guy: meh...he was there I guess I like how he wasn't involved in too much mess 3.5/5

The secretary: I loved this character I really like his back story with his mother, it probably was the most interesting part of this drama, I felt so bad for him :( 4.5/5

The story was okay, I was more interested in the secretary and his mother's story & the fl's dead mother than the other romance tbh.
I would recommend though, it's funny sometimes and heartwarming. I'm just nitpicking at the bad parts.

also, stepmom and sister got their karma

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Cute and fluffy

It is what it is. This is a fluffy, romantic comedy sprinkled with melodrama.
If the title did not make it abundantly clear, it's about a poor, mistreated, down on her luck girl and 4 good-looking, well-off men whose lives get entangled.
Be very clear about the implications of watching a fluff drama:
1. Don't expect logic.
2. Don't expect realistic portrayals.
3. Expect over-the-top stuff.
4. Expect Love triangles and love polygons.
5. Expect drama.

FYI, the FL is not a ditzy damsel in distress. Quite the contrary.

Keeping all the points mentioned above in mind, this drama is quite enjoyable. The story while predictable is engaging (I did skip through the unnecessary plot points like the step family plotting, fake dad ). The acting is good, decent. The leads are natural and have great chemistry with eachother. I loved Il Woo. Lots of cutesy scenes and pretty good kissing scenes that had me swooning. The story can get annoying ( reasons why the FL-ML break up, wrong-doers not punished, no meaningful redemption for Cinderella 's dad, etc.). But, it has a happy ending.

Good set of OST.

The romance, the fluff and all the cute stuff made it enjoyable to me despite the shortcomings in the story. If you enjoy fluffy stuff or are looking for a drama to pass time, this meets the criteria.

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Initially I put this drama as of no interest to me, since I'm usually not fond of cinderella/chaebol plotlines. I mean, aside from a few that I did like, the genre as a whole tend to annoy me somewhat. But then as time passed, I got to see Jung Ilwoo, Park Sodam and Ahn Jaehyun's other works and thought about giving the series a proper look.

And I guess it worked out in the end, as it didn't take long for me to like the characters and premise. For one, I enjoyed this drama much better than The Heirs as the plot here was much more fun to watch. For one thing, as much as Hyunmin was so much of a womanizer and assholey at first glance, he's much better than a certain Kim Tan in that it didn't feel like he's being pretentious for being a rich kid or act disbelievingly flamboyant. And later on Hyunmin's characterization expanded even more to reveal that he wasn't in fact, quite the superficial person that we initially thought of. In that sense, Hyunmin's character was better developed than Kim Tan and that other character the other actor had played prior. As in for one, Hyunmin's action for 'bullying' the person he truly liked was out of their own sense of guilt and felt undeserving of being loved.

Park Sodam here played the main female character Eun Hawon, our titular Cinderella who didn't quite believe in the fairy tale magic. Have to say that I like Ha Won's version of the cinderella trope; in that despite how her life was a mess, she didn't let that get her down. And she can fend for herself too, so as much as her step family treating her badly she never let that bring her down. That said, Jiwoon's character already had his own charm in the kind of angsty boy type. Like he wasn't a family rebel for no reason and his bad relationship with his grandfather stemmed from something that happened in the past. It's not quite the Prince Charming one could've expected but when paired with our cinderella, the two do look good together!

Seriously can't help with the comparison with The Heirs since there was a lot of common elements between these two that kept reminding me. Not to mention Boys Over Flowers, though I'm more into the original JP adaptations and not bothering with the Korean one, especially with the whole 'making the girl miserable' trope. Even then, I have seen a lot of different version of the F4-type tropes in many dramas and some dramas tend to overplay that trope to the point of annoyance. But surprisingly, this drama kept amusing me. There were even moments that I can't help feeling my heart flutter as we see more of the apparent love square between Hyunmin-Ha Won-Jiwoon-Hyeji. Though you might blame that to the very good ost popping out at good timing.

Honestly I never thought I'd end up enjoying this drama a lot. The story elements were pretty balanced in a way that Ha Won's family was like the usual cinderella setting aka the stepmother and stepsister treating her badly and stripping her of any basic neccessities to the point that she needed to be self-reliant. Twist here would be that the dad was lead to think that Ha Won wasn't his child due to a misunderstanding thus overlooking the problems in the household. The issues within the Haneul household was also pretty decently set, like the reasons why the grandsons were in bad terms with the elders was understandable and it wasn't just typical poor people weren't a match with rich people trope (thus they would do their cruealest act to separate the couple). Heck, I like the grandfather and I'm glad that he wasn't written as just a rich old man with shallow personality who only thinks of profit. Also, the way the different people start to care and grow affections in the drama were also written well and the love didn't just happen suddenly and you can really see the chemistry happening between these relationship. Have to say that this was pretty rare in dramas of these tropes as usually the tropes can be exagerated too much, but it was executed very well here without making it feel too cliche'd.

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I watched this expecting some things not to make sense, just wanting a light-hearted silly rom-com with a happy ending. And I got what I came for, so I can't complain.
I like the story itself, it's a nice re-version of Cinderella, although ther were a few things I couldn't really stand, and by a few things, I mean Hawon's father. The man won shittiest father of the year, even to the grandfather of the Kang cousins. I was also surprised when I noticed her stepmother actually loved him, like, why wase she so mean to the daughter of the man she genuinely loved? I was expecting makjang, but that storyline doesn't make sense in any world.
The romance was cute, I wasn't much into the main couple at first, but honestly they won me over being cute after they get together. I wasn't very fond of the second couple tbh.
I didn't care about the acting, as I was expecting it to be a bit over-the-top and silly, but I have to say I couldn't stand Son Naeun's performance, her character was a bit annoying at times (and likeable at others), but I always felt like punching her when she spoke (I like her as an idol though!!). Ahn Jaehyun's facial expressions were terrible, but he made me laugh a lot with them and I'm not sure it was on purpose, as it's my first time watching him and I've read good comments about him, so I'll let it slide lol. Park Sodam was lovely, she fit perfectly into this silly world while still feeling like an actual person. And I also enjoyed Lee Jungshin a lot, I only realized he was from CNBlue after he made the joke lol.
The OST was meh, honestly. I love BTOB, but this song kinda wasn't it for me. Jessi's song kinda got me on my nerves whenever it started playing, I'm not sure why.

Overall, I enjoyed this a lot. The pace of the story was pretty good, something that doesn't happen often on this kind of shows. As long as I didn't take it seriously, I laughed a lot. I feel like it's a good comfort show to re-watch when you need to get your mind off of things.

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Cinderella didn't choose the best guy this time

I love all Cinderella movies and every possible version of it, so when this title appeared in the suggestions on my Netflix, I couldn't resist! It took me 5 days to see the whole thing and it was a beautiful week.

Female lead is independent and does not give a shit. It was very refreshing point of view on Cinderella. Also this type of female character seems to be quite rare in k-drama and Ha-Won stands out 😅💪 She is strong mentally and with her body 😍 I liked from the first moments of the drama and didn't lose it even when she was a bit annoying by the end of the drama. I found an comment calling her situation a "reversed harem" and that was so accurate!

Sweet chemistry between the leads was inevitable as they had many cute moments. But because the sentance that was the most often said between these two was not "I love you" but "fuck off" 😂💜 makes their love story funny. Seo-Woo is one of my most liked characters as he has his own life and is not unneccesarily mean to others but his carees is just thrown onto spectators and never explained how, what and why. I personally think that he would be a better partner for Cinderella.

Big minus - Cinderella is surounded with Four Knights only in a theory. She lives with 3 of them and fourth (?) is coming and going and we also know shit about him. The title completly doesn't corespod with that is actually going on in the drama.

Maybe drama has a few shortcomings but fortunately the drama is well put together so they are not bothersome. Personally, I liked the drama because it is a fresh look at the Cinderella story and I would rate the series 6/10 - it's not over the top but also not boring 👌😋 It has a good balance.

Till this day I have never even thought of searching for the soundtrack of a drama. Even though I loved many song in various productions, I had never downloaded it but "For You" from BTOB and "I Believe" of Younha had to be the exceptions. Those songs are so fantastic that I had to have them on my good-morning playlist.

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One of my all time favorites

10/10 is my rating. A 2016 South Korean television series with 16, 60 minute episodes. It is based on a novel that had the same title and the basic elements of the story draws some parallels with Boys Over Flowers (2009).

The "Cinderella" in this story is Eun Ha Won (Park So-dam) who is hard working and mature for her age. She lost her mother and her father remarried but is rarely home. She lives with her stepmother and step sisters who do not consider her family and are selfish with the limited resources the family has. Ha Won is working multiple part-time jobs to save up for college. Her mother, when alive, encouraged Ha Won to be a teacher and that is her life goal.
Circumstances lead her into the realm of three rich, spoiled, heirs to an empire and the Grandfather thinks she might be just the one to get the boys into shape. This is after he saw her "discipline" one of his grandsons who was not treating his elder or her with respect.The grandfather strikes a deal with her and gets her to move in with his handsome nephews as sort of an adult nanny. Before moving in, Ha Won already had encounters with lady's man and playboy Kang Hyun Min (Ahn Jae-hyun) and the "gangsterish" rebel Kang Ji Woon (Jung ll-Woo). Kang Seo Woo (Lee Jung-shin) is not immediately on Ha Won's radar but the grandfather does not think much of his music career. The fourth knight is the grandson's live in bodyguard Lee Yoon Sung (Choi Min). Park Hye Ji (Son Na-eun) is a childhood friend of Kang Hyun Min and Kang Ji Woon has designated himself as her protector. Hye Ji sees herself marrying into the Kang family and often uses one of the cousins to get the attention of another.

Spoiler 🚨 I was actually surprised with how much I loved this movie. Ha Won was everything I love in a lead female character she was feisty at times, sweet and nice to most, fun, positive. I really loved the way she slowly transformed the rich, spoiled heirs. I love bromances and developing relationships. I wasn't disappointed in any aspect of this movie - it was pretty much perfect to me.

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Totally deserve watching!!

Highly recommended, Actually before starting this drama i didn't have much expectations from it but while watching 2-3 episodes i was like no this is something else l, it's something which i was finding for a long time. It's just like the dramas which are for so loved by the watchers like boys over flowers, Love O2O, Descendants of the sun. OST, music, acting, story, cast are just the perfectly put in this. Also, it's my first time writing this much long review to any drama and the reason is becoz i am far so impressed by it and i want more people to watch and becoz it's so underrated drama on MDL it's just got rating of 7.8 overall and on IMDb not quite good too so I'm expecting it to get atleast more than 8.5 star rating becoz it really deserves. Also, if it didn't i also won't be here writing this review becoz i know i never wrote for any. Lastly, very sorry if there's any grammatical mistakes you see i am very excited so i didn't care about those. I am just writing whatever i'm feeling like. So please go watch it, if you didn't by now, becoz really you're missing a masterpiece. Thankyou!!

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