Clumsy but heartfelt

I'm a big fan of IU as a singer, so I watched quite a bit of her on youtube, and I couldn't help but notice some of those comments that mention her as an actress as well. The thing is, when you watch a dozen or two of K-Pop videos, you start to realize that all comments for all videos are more or less the same, they might as well be automatically generated at this point. If you take them all at face value, you might think that K-Pop industry produces nothing but masterpieces after masterpieces, all vocalists are world-class, and in case they also happen to be an actor, they are also a genius actor, because of course they are. Needless to say, all this can't be true at the same time (and it's not), so when I saw all those comments along the lines of "wow, IU is such an actress, such an actress, wow", I was unimpressed. Famous singers branching out to an acting career is not a thing that often yields outstanding results, or even good ones for that matter. But oh well, what do I have to lose. "Hotel Del Luna" was one of the latest things featuring her at the time, the premise sounded kinda anime-ish, and I love me some anime now and then, might as well give it a shot. Long story short, I was skeptical about IU's acting, didn't know any of the other actors, and therefore didn't expect a lot from the drama itself. Was I wrong? Well...

First, let's address the elephant in the room. Saying IU's perfomance here is good would be a vast understatement. As I said, I thought she'd be passable at best, just stand there being pretty and maybe have a funny scene now and then, and honestly I'd be okay with that. Instead, right of the gate I got something wildly different. The ease with which this woman owns the scene is jaw-dropping, with force and confidence in every movement, every glance and gesture radiating such immense amounts of screen presence that at first it took me some time to even remember who I was looking at. That, mixed with (mostly) great comedic timing and several deeply powerful dramatic moments, make up a fascinating character. Words can't describe how fun she is to watch on screen, she literally carries the whole series. There's no ignoring it, I just have to admit: this time, youtube comments actually got it right.

On the other hand, IU carrying the show is precisely the issue, because it unfortunately does need to be carried. Despite it being overall solid, the problems are many, and they are hard to look over.

The first, and the biggest one, is the tone. The show is all over the place, jumping from genre to genre as fast as a hamster on coffee. Sure, you can combine a comedy, a horror and a drama, but it's hard, and boy oh boy here it's not done greatly. You can have a scene where the male lead runs away from a ghost with BLOOD-STAINED EMPTY EYESOCKETS and there's jolly "Benny Hill"-style music playing in the background. Like, look, what a wacky predicament this guy's in, don't you also hate it when there's an eyeless undead coming after you in the evening?.. Zoinks, Scoob! That's just one example that came to my mind, but there're many.

The writing suffers from this inconsistency too. I won't go into how the local "ghost world" doesn't really work, how they keep inventing new rules all the time, because to me all this ghostly stuff seemed more like means to an end, a medium to convey their ideas. There are other issues to talk about, for example how the episodes are divided. Episodes, except the first one, almost never feel like they have a beginning and an end, it always seems like the writers just chopped the whole script into 16 even pieces and each episode ends as soon as the runtime is over, no matter what happens. The final episode especially, it was literally like, "oh damn it, we still haven't wrapped up the bartender's story, quick, shoehorn it in! Ok, done, now back to the main stuff". It's really glaring.
Next. there's the most random stuff throughout the series. For example, IU's character happens to be a fan of some... dumpling-eating-champion dude?.. Huh? They make such a big deal out of it, just left me wondering, what it the world is this for. Maybe you have to be Korean to get it?.. Or another thing, this show has a strange habit of introducing new characters just to immediately kill them off (or despose of them in another way, given that some of them are already dead), Sanchez's girlfriend as the prominent example. This makes characters into plot devices, and it's not a sign of good writing.
The serial killer subplot was a huge disappointment. All that building up just ending in a wet fart. I get it, the Grim Reaper is an unstoppable force, but then why hype the killer's ghost up as this huge threat? What was the point of this dude in the story?
Most of all, after watching the whole drama, I'm still not sure I understand what IU's character did that was so wrong as to have to pay for it the way she does? From what I saw, all her deeds in the past warranted a prison sentence (ok, maybe an execution even, considering the times), but this? For killing that guy, really? She mentioned something about "a lot of bad things afterwards", are those "things" what's supposed to be her sins? Or it just guilt, like a self-inflicted punishment? Honestly, hell if I know, but whatever.

Acting is yet another mixed bag.
Yeo Jin Goo as the male lead is simply bland. As far as I heard, the guy is a really good actor, but for some reason here he always seems slightly out of place, always just a bit off, always just barely good enough. And the way I see it, it's not even really his fault, it's just the writing doesn't exactly know what to do with him with its tone jumping all over the place. His interactions with IU's character can be engaging to watch, but as everything in this show, it's hit-and-miss. Given it's supposed to be a romantic subplot, there should be much more chemistry between the leads. But it's... hardly ever there. His character development doesn't feel organic, he has like two and a half facial expressions, and with such a powerhouse of a screen partner, the guy's just kinda... there.
Hotel's staff I mostly didn't like very much. The bartender and the head maid were mostly there either to re-iterate what just happened (which required them standing next to each other and looking into the distance meaningfully) or to briefly announce what was going to happen next, with maybe a small occasional exposition dump. The receptionist had his own romantic subplot, because otherwise he'd have no place in the story. All three also got their personal quests just thrown in at the beginning and never addressed until the last stretch of the show. The "Miss Fourth Choice" girl I felt was the only one remotely interersting, even due to her circumstances alone, but even those were never really explored after she, uh, settled in. It was more like, oh okay, I guess I live in this body now, cool, and that's it. And yes, she's the receptionist's romantic interest.
One who was awesome was the Grim Reaper, I freaking loved that guy. He didn't have a lot of screen time but delivered a couple of one-scene miracles. Give that man an Oscar.

Now I have to vent a bit, please bear with me. The thing that started to really, REALLY annoy me several episodes into the drama was the soundtrack. Or, to put it better, the way the soundtrack was used. The playlist features a multitude of high-tier Korean stars, including IU herself, Gummy, Paul Kim, Red Velvet, the list goes on. So, what are they gonna do with such a cast? Of course they're gonna milk it dry! Every single there's an emotional scene, a ballad turns on in the background, most of the time the same one. After three or four episodes, it had me eye-rolling and thinking "please don't start the song, you don't need a song here, just let the scene play out", but my prayers were never heard. One time, the song had already finished but the scene still went on, and what do you think they did? Immediately put on another song! Because apparently the audience wouldn't know how to feel without Taeyeon singing in the background. This is one of the major directing problems with this drama, it seems to have no clue how to utilize its quiet moments, and hence there's barely any. I swear it made me remember Nostalgia Critic and his review of Disney's "Tarzan", where he bashed the cartoon for hammering Phil Collins into every "feely" scene. And it's a darn shame, these songs are great, too bad the authors didn't think of a way to use them sparinlgy. The funniest thing is, the soundtrack also has... "The Moonlight Sonata"! Because "moon", "luna", get it? I think it was the first track to play in the very first episode, and it was so jarring I couldn't help but laugh a bit. I don't know, maybe European classical music sounds exotic and otherwordly to Korean audience or something, but I just found it very odd and borderline pretentious, thank god it didn't play often.
Vent over, thank you, sorry.

All that being said, when "Hotel Del Luna" commits to something, it can be great, there are multiple cool little side-plots sprinkled in, and it can be genuinely funny and genuinely creepy, and sometimes deliver a good tear-jerker. It just doesn't always feel the right way to shift between the three or how to mix them up. I guess the whole point is to tell the story of this tormented old soul, and if you view it as IU's characters story, as opposed to a romance story, it does indeed work. When they speak of grief, guilt and learning to let go, it can actually be meaningful and touching. Though sometimes awkwardly put together, sometimes clunky and corny or even downright silly, it's still truly soulful, and it's still entertaining if you're willing to give it a pass on some stuff. This is not a masterpiece but more like "their heart is in the right place" sort of situation. It feels like they actually want to make something good. And if you haven't seen IU as an actress before, maybe it'll become your IU gateway drug, it sure became mine.

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