She "was" pretty?
I polished off another drama over the weekend!
This drama is a remake of a Korean drama, She Was Pretty.
Not sure who the pretty/unpretty person is supposed to be either.
The premise for both dramas is that the main girl "used to be" pretty but then, due to life circumstances, grew up to be "less pretty". The main guy doesn't recognize her because of the "downgraded appearance" and romantic comedy ensues...I guess?
The drama subtitle uses the Taiwanese way of splitting up first names instead of mashing them together (ie. Li Hui Zheng instead of Li Huizheng) so I'll refer to all character names like that to be consistent.
Cast and Characters
The titular Li Hui Zheng is played by the amazingly beautiful Dilraba Dilmurat.
Ummm...chips.
To make her "ugly", they gave her exaggerated freckles, large (fake) glasses, and a frizzy wig. She ended up still looking more beautiful than most of the world population.
Clearly so hideous!
Peter Sheng is just so amusingly dead-eyed and robotic that I have a fond place for him in my drama-watching life. His biography states that he's some sort of model/actor.
With that many packs and such a lack of expression, I'm guessing he's more model than actor. His specialty is...posing with large stuffed animals?
Even that giant teddy bear behind him has more expression in its eyes.
In this drama, Peter Sheng plays the robot Associate Editor of Immortal magazine and Li Hui Zheng's robot childhood fat friend, Bai Hao Yu. Since Peter Sheng looks the same no matter what role he is in, there's no point in posting additional photos of the guy.
Vin Zheng, who must be contractually obligated to make dramas with Dilraba Dilmurat, plays second male lead Lin Yi Mu.
OMG that's such a cute baby Jabba! (sorry, real Jabba)
The contractual obligation is fine with me. Whether they're playing total strangers who meet up once to complain about how pathetic they are (Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms), Stockholm Syndrome couple (The King's Woman), or this drama, they seem like they're having fun together.
To round out the love-square, there's Li Hui Zheng's roommate/best friend Xia Qiao, played by Sierra Li. Adult Bai Hao Yu mistakes Xia Qiao for Lin Hui Zheng and comedy ensues!
At least the second female lead is also pretty, therefore making it slightly more believable that someone would consider Xia Qiao prettier than Li Hui Zhen.
Other major people are (from left to right):
Will Song as Lin Hu Sheng
Wang Yi Fei and Han Xue
Wang Yi Nan as Zhu Ying
The four aforementioned main leads
Wang Xiao as Lin Hao
Wen Wei as Vivian
Pros: Music
The music is pretty good. Dilraba Dilmurat does the opening theme song and she has a good, light pop-y voice.
She also contributes to an insert song, which isn't as good because less upbeat.
Vin Zhang does a duet and it's less memorable to me since I like slow pop songs a lot less than fast ones.
Overall, the title track is really good and the other songs are just average since I don't like slow pop songs. So I would rate the music as overall positive. The good track is very good and the other tracks aren't offensive.
Cons - the main male characters
Bai Hao Yu is a dick. This character continues the trend of the male lead that's too cool for life and I can't see what anyone would see in him. As much as I like Peter Sheng and feel that he does okay with the too cool for life role, I just can't stand his character in the first half of the drama. Bai Hao Yu is the epitome of the guy that would go on a dinner date with a woman and treat her like a princess. But then comes the waitstaff and he would belittle them and yell at them. Early on, even Bai Hao Yu's friend makes the comment that in Bai Hao Yu's life, there's Li Hui Zhen and then there's everyone else. Bai Hao Yu treats Li Hui Zhen (or who he believes is his childhood friend Lin Hui Zhen) very well. But everyone else can fuck off and die.
Towards the middle, when Bai Hao Yu finds out that Xia Qiao had lied about being Lin Hui Zhen, he is understandably angry. But he instantly runs to find the real Li Hui Zhen and it was all hugs between them. Does he not realize that Li Hui Zhen also lied to him a lot of times in order for him to think that she's not the real Li Hui Zhen? But he can easily forgive Li Hui Zhen for her many lies (she's in fact the person that caused the misunderstanding in the first place) but he cannot forgive Xia Qiao.
He's just so aggressively cocky that he also doesn't see that he was the one that somewhat contributed to the mistaken identity. In their first meeting, Bai Hao Yu and Li Hui Zhen were on the phone with each other and actually pass each other on a bridge. But Bai Hao Yu was so stuck with the idea that Li Hui Zhen must be a beautiful woman and couldn't possibly be as hideous as Dilraba Dilmurat in a bad wig. He goes up to Xia Qiao and instantly starts a conversation with her as if she was Li Hui Zhen. Maybe if he let the other person get a word in, there wouldn't be such understandings
People hate this type of people for very good reason so making the main lead this type of dick makes him very unlikable. The story makes him better towards the end where he eventually forgives Xia Qiao and becomes less of a dick. But still, I just can't stand the earlier characterizations of his character. I'm a pretty unforgiving type of person and I would totally not date someone like Bai Hao Yu if he treated me the way he treated Li Hui Zhen in the beginning of the drama. Therefore, the drama unwittingly makes me root for Lin Yi Mu, who is another type of dick, but the lesser of two evils.
The main issue I have with Lin Yi Mu happens in the first few episodes. When Lin Hui Zhen and Lin Yi Mu were still new co-workers/complete strangers, he gets very manipulative with her to try to get her to take him out for meals, guilts her into doing things that she didn't want to do, and - like a true psychopath - tries to feed candy to unwilling women.
He pulls the same shit with Xia Qiao, who is the manager at the hotel he's staying in where he's in their VIP suite. Xia Qiao was just very competently doing her job at the hotel when Lin Yi Mu gets all creepster on her by pinning her to a wall. Then gets her in trouble with her boss and was forced to apologize to him (for what!). Then he feeds her candy. That whole scene was just so enraging and annoying to watch.
Then the writers realized that they made him too much of a weird manipulative psychopath so they did a 180 with his character. But the damage is done because I cannot totally condone him and Li Hui Zhen as a couple either. The drama does make Li Hui Zhen and Lin Yi Mu out to have a more playful brother/sister relationship towards the middle/end, and that makes them more bearable as people. Still, nothing was lost when the two of them go their separate ways in the end.
Cons: Unconvincing romance
Based on the above poorness of the two male leads and also based on Peter Sheng's robot personality, the main couple is extremely unconvincing. Dilraba Dilmurat sells it really well that her character is in love with Bai Hao Yu. On the other hand, Peter Sheng just can't.
She looks like she's in love. He looks like he might have gone into sleep mode.
On the other hand, it's already established that Vin Zhang and Dilraba Dilmurat are able to sell looking like they're in love really well. But due to writing, it's far better that his Lin Yi Mu doesn't end up with her Li Hui Zhen. Therefore, I don't find any of the main couples romantic. It's more just an amusing story to watch about all these people being fools.
Pros: Female friendship and relationships
I do like very much how the drama handled the love triangle between Li Hui Zhen, Xia Qiao, and Bai Hao Yu. It is never in doubt that Li Hui Zhen and Bai Hao Yu are meant to be. And it's never in doubt that Li Hui Zhen and Xia Qiao are the best of friends. But through the various lies Li Hui Zhen told, Bai Hao Yu mistakes Xia Qiao for Li Hui Zhen. It is Bai Hao Yu who actively pursues Xia Qiao even while she's telling Li Hui Zhen to come clean. And it's a moment of weakness on Xia Qiao's part for her to continue their fake romantic relationship. It's an act of betrayal of friendship and but the two of them are more concerned with each others' feelings than Bai Hao Yu's love. The two friends are never catty with each other and they don't have a major fallout because of Bai Hao Yu. Just based on that, I ship Li Hui Zhen and Xia Qiao's relationship more than either of those two women with any of the men in the drama.
There are other female friendships and relationships that are well done. At work, Li Hui Zhen finds a very good mentor in Zhu Ying, the older office manager. She also forms pretty good work friendships with the younger women at work. There's never any sort of intrigue backstabbing and power grabbing at their workplace. So, again, I find that really nice in a drama.
At the end, Li Hui Zhen joins a group of female authors and they're all shown to be very supportive of one another and they all get along in some sort of feminist utopia.
Pros and Cons: Good side stories versus super long drama
There are times in drama when the story shifts to certain characters and I just start spacing out because their stories aren't interesting in any way or is too boring. This never happens in this drama. But at the same time, this drama is too long at 40 episodes for the main story it is telling.
I really enjoy Han Xue and Lin Hu Sheng's side story. Han Xue spends most of the drama as a golddigger trying to figure out which of the three guys in the editing department is the CEO's son. Since they all have Lin as their last name, the process Han Xue goes to to figure it out is amusing to watch. At one point, she treats Lin Hao to lunch only to have him bale on her halfway through the meal. So she walks back to the office a bit dejected only to run into Lin Hu Sheng. She doesn't turn down his offer of lunch since she wants the chance to talk to him. Already super full, she still hasn't figured out if Lin Hu Sheng is the rich son at the end of the meal. While going to the pharmacy to pick up some antacids, she runs into Lin Yi Mu coming back from an interview and he invites her to eat lunch with him. Her persistence and the extent she'll go to for golddigging is amusing even if she does choose true love in the end.
"He...has money to pay for this kiss, right?"
Every minor character is fleshed out and it makes for good characterization but bad on the impatient.
Pros and Cons-ish
I can't tell if this drama is dubbed. Most of the actors sound like themselves. There are ambient noises and echos that make it sound like they used live recording. But then there are the odd times when the lip sync is off or it feels like some people are dubbed and not others.
This rarely happens and I only find it obvious on Vivian, the Editor-in-Chief. Vivian often drops the odd English word/phrase in her sentences. Based on when the lips are in sync, it's clear that Wen Wei, who plays Vivian, does speak English fluently like her character. But sometimes, her lips are just not in sync. I can only guess that the actor drops more English word/phrases than post-production wanted and dubbed some/all of her lines to replace the English with Mandarin.
I also sometimes feel like Li Hui Zhen was dubbed, but I can't really put my finger on why I think that.
So, good for the drama if it is not dubbed or only dubbed when necessary. Bad, if the drama is dubbed. But at least they did a good job with lip sync if they did dub the whole drama.
Pros: Food
"Fun" fact: China considers Dilraba Dilmurat fat.
Clearly obese.
Now that China made us all have eating disorders, the drama continues by showing us these pretty, skinny people eating all the damn time then drinking this Supermodel 25 drink to lose weight.
Fatsos, all of them.
When they're not actually eating, they're talking about eating. Every single episode. Therefore, Henry and I went and ate hot pot.
The End
I never watched She Was Pretty, so I can't compare how this drama stacks up to the original. Based on previous Korean dramas I've watched, I have no great interest in ever watching She Was Pretty. Most of the internet reviews seem to say the original was better and that's not surprising. In most things, the original is better (ie. Fated to Love You). But I did find Pretty Li Hui Zhen good in that it tells a good story (along with many side stories). The characters that are not the main male lead are all very good characters. It being a comedy, I actually do find some of the elements funny though it's never LOL funny.
This drama is a remake of a Korean drama, She Was Pretty.
Not sure who the pretty/unpretty person is supposed to be either.
The premise for both dramas is that the main girl "used to be" pretty but then, due to life circumstances, grew up to be "less pretty". The main guy doesn't recognize her because of the "downgraded appearance" and romantic comedy ensues...I guess?
The drama subtitle uses the Taiwanese way of splitting up first names instead of mashing them together (ie. Li Hui Zheng instead of Li Huizheng) so I'll refer to all character names like that to be consistent.
Cast and Characters
The titular Li Hui Zheng is played by the amazingly beautiful Dilraba Dilmurat.
Ummm...chips.
To make her "ugly", they gave her exaggerated freckles, large (fake) glasses, and a frizzy wig. She ended up still looking more beautiful than most of the world population.
Clearly so hideous!
Peter Sheng is just so amusingly dead-eyed and robotic that I have a fond place for him in my drama-watching life. His biography states that he's some sort of model/actor.
With that many packs and such a lack of expression, I'm guessing he's more model than actor. His specialty is...posing with large stuffed animals?
Even that giant teddy bear behind him has more expression in its eyes.
In this drama, Peter Sheng plays the robot Associate Editor of Immortal magazine and Li Hui Zheng's robot childhood fat friend, Bai Hao Yu. Since Peter Sheng looks the same no matter what role he is in, there's no point in posting additional photos of the guy.
Vin Zheng, who must be contractually obligated to make dramas with Dilraba Dilmurat, plays second male lead Lin Yi Mu.
OMG that's such a cute baby Jabba! (sorry, real Jabba)
The contractual obligation is fine with me. Whether they're playing total strangers who meet up once to complain about how pathetic they are (Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms), Stockholm Syndrome couple (The King's Woman), or this drama, they seem like they're having fun together.
To round out the love-square, there's Li Hui Zheng's roommate/best friend Xia Qiao, played by Sierra Li. Adult Bai Hao Yu mistakes Xia Qiao for Lin Hui Zheng and comedy ensues!
At least the second female lead is also pretty, therefore making it slightly more believable that someone would consider Xia Qiao prettier than Li Hui Zhen.
Other major people are (from left to right):
Will Song as Lin Hu Sheng
Wang Yi Fei and Han Xue
Wang Yi Nan as Zhu Ying
The four aforementioned main leads
Wang Xiao as Lin Hao
Wen Wei as Vivian
Pros: Music
The music is pretty good. Dilraba Dilmurat does the opening theme song and she has a good, light pop-y voice.
Click to viewShe also contributes to an insert song, which isn't as good because less upbeat.
Vin Zhang does a duet and it's less memorable to me since I like slow pop songs a lot less than fast ones.
Overall, the title track is really good and the other songs are just average since I don't like slow pop songs. So I would rate the music as overall positive. The good track is very good and the other tracks aren't offensive.
Cons - the main male characters
Bai Hao Yu is a dick. This character continues the trend of the male lead that's too cool for life and I can't see what anyone would see in him. As much as I like Peter Sheng and feel that he does okay with the too cool for life role, I just can't stand his character in the first half of the drama. Bai Hao Yu is the epitome of the guy that would go on a dinner date with a woman and treat her like a princess. But then comes the waitstaff and he would belittle them and yell at them. Early on, even Bai Hao Yu's friend makes the comment that in Bai Hao Yu's life, there's Li Hui Zhen and then there's everyone else. Bai Hao Yu treats Li Hui Zhen (or who he believes is his childhood friend Lin Hui Zhen) very well. But everyone else can fuck off and die.
Towards the middle, when Bai Hao Yu finds out that Xia Qiao had lied about being Lin Hui Zhen, he is understandably angry. But he instantly runs to find the real Li Hui Zhen and it was all hugs between them. Does he not realize that Li Hui Zhen also lied to him a lot of times in order for him to think that she's not the real Li Hui Zhen? But he can easily forgive Li Hui Zhen for her many lies (she's in fact the person that caused the misunderstanding in the first place) but he cannot forgive Xia Qiao.
He's just so aggressively cocky that he also doesn't see that he was the one that somewhat contributed to the mistaken identity. In their first meeting, Bai Hao Yu and Li Hui Zhen were on the phone with each other and actually pass each other on a bridge. But Bai Hao Yu was so stuck with the idea that Li Hui Zhen must be a beautiful woman and couldn't possibly be as hideous as Dilraba Dilmurat in a bad wig. He goes up to Xia Qiao and instantly starts a conversation with her as if she was Li Hui Zhen. Maybe if he let the other person get a word in, there wouldn't be such understandings
People hate this type of people for very good reason so making the main lead this type of dick makes him very unlikable. The story makes him better towards the end where he eventually forgives Xia Qiao and becomes less of a dick. But still, I just can't stand the earlier characterizations of his character. I'm a pretty unforgiving type of person and I would totally not date someone like Bai Hao Yu if he treated me the way he treated Li Hui Zhen in the beginning of the drama. Therefore, the drama unwittingly makes me root for Lin Yi Mu, who is another type of dick, but the lesser of two evils.
The main issue I have with Lin Yi Mu happens in the first few episodes. When Lin Hui Zhen and Lin Yi Mu were still new co-workers/complete strangers, he gets very manipulative with her to try to get her to take him out for meals, guilts her into doing things that she didn't want to do, and - like a true psychopath - tries to feed candy to unwilling women.
He pulls the same shit with Xia Qiao, who is the manager at the hotel he's staying in where he's in their VIP suite. Xia Qiao was just very competently doing her job at the hotel when Lin Yi Mu gets all creepster on her by pinning her to a wall. Then gets her in trouble with her boss and was forced to apologize to him (for what!). Then he feeds her candy. That whole scene was just so enraging and annoying to watch.
Then the writers realized that they made him too much of a weird manipulative psychopath so they did a 180 with his character. But the damage is done because I cannot totally condone him and Li Hui Zhen as a couple either. The drama does make Li Hui Zhen and Lin Yi Mu out to have a more playful brother/sister relationship towards the middle/end, and that makes them more bearable as people. Still, nothing was lost when the two of them go their separate ways in the end.
Cons: Unconvincing romance
Based on the above poorness of the two male leads and also based on Peter Sheng's robot personality, the main couple is extremely unconvincing. Dilraba Dilmurat sells it really well that her character is in love with Bai Hao Yu. On the other hand, Peter Sheng just can't.
She looks like she's in love. He looks like he might have gone into sleep mode.
On the other hand, it's already established that Vin Zhang and Dilraba Dilmurat are able to sell looking like they're in love really well. But due to writing, it's far better that his Lin Yi Mu doesn't end up with her Li Hui Zhen. Therefore, I don't find any of the main couples romantic. It's more just an amusing story to watch about all these people being fools.
Pros: Female friendship and relationships
I do like very much how the drama handled the love triangle between Li Hui Zhen, Xia Qiao, and Bai Hao Yu. It is never in doubt that Li Hui Zhen and Bai Hao Yu are meant to be. And it's never in doubt that Li Hui Zhen and Xia Qiao are the best of friends. But through the various lies Li Hui Zhen told, Bai Hao Yu mistakes Xia Qiao for Li Hui Zhen. It is Bai Hao Yu who actively pursues Xia Qiao even while she's telling Li Hui Zhen to come clean. And it's a moment of weakness on Xia Qiao's part for her to continue their fake romantic relationship. It's an act of betrayal of friendship and but the two of them are more concerned with each others' feelings than Bai Hao Yu's love. The two friends are never catty with each other and they don't have a major fallout because of Bai Hao Yu. Just based on that, I ship Li Hui Zhen and Xia Qiao's relationship more than either of those two women with any of the men in the drama.
There are other female friendships and relationships that are well done. At work, Li Hui Zhen finds a very good mentor in Zhu Ying, the older office manager. She also forms pretty good work friendships with the younger women at work. There's never any sort of intrigue backstabbing and power grabbing at their workplace. So, again, I find that really nice in a drama.
At the end, Li Hui Zhen joins a group of female authors and they're all shown to be very supportive of one another and they all get along in some sort of feminist utopia.
Pros and Cons: Good side stories versus super long drama
There are times in drama when the story shifts to certain characters and I just start spacing out because their stories aren't interesting in any way or is too boring. This never happens in this drama. But at the same time, this drama is too long at 40 episodes for the main story it is telling.
I really enjoy Han Xue and Lin Hu Sheng's side story. Han Xue spends most of the drama as a golddigger trying to figure out which of the three guys in the editing department is the CEO's son. Since they all have Lin as their last name, the process Han Xue goes to to figure it out is amusing to watch. At one point, she treats Lin Hao to lunch only to have him bale on her halfway through the meal. So she walks back to the office a bit dejected only to run into Lin Hu Sheng. She doesn't turn down his offer of lunch since she wants the chance to talk to him. Already super full, she still hasn't figured out if Lin Hu Sheng is the rich son at the end of the meal. While going to the pharmacy to pick up some antacids, she runs into Lin Yi Mu coming back from an interview and he invites her to eat lunch with him. Her persistence and the extent she'll go to for golddigging is amusing even if she does choose true love in the end.
"He...has money to pay for this kiss, right?"
Every minor character is fleshed out and it makes for good characterization but bad on the impatient.
Pros and Cons-ish
I can't tell if this drama is dubbed. Most of the actors sound like themselves. There are ambient noises and echos that make it sound like they used live recording. But then there are the odd times when the lip sync is off or it feels like some people are dubbed and not others.
This rarely happens and I only find it obvious on Vivian, the Editor-in-Chief. Vivian often drops the odd English word/phrase in her sentences. Based on when the lips are in sync, it's clear that Wen Wei, who plays Vivian, does speak English fluently like her character. But sometimes, her lips are just not in sync. I can only guess that the actor drops more English word/phrases than post-production wanted and dubbed some/all of her lines to replace the English with Mandarin.
I also sometimes feel like Li Hui Zhen was dubbed, but I can't really put my finger on why I think that.
So, good for the drama if it is not dubbed or only dubbed when necessary. Bad, if the drama is dubbed. But at least they did a good job with lip sync if they did dub the whole drama.
Pros: Food
"Fun" fact: China considers Dilraba Dilmurat fat.
Clearly obese.
Now that China made us all have eating disorders, the drama continues by showing us these pretty, skinny people eating all the damn time then drinking this Supermodel 25 drink to lose weight.
Fatsos, all of them.
When they're not actually eating, they're talking about eating. Every single episode. Therefore, Henry and I went and ate hot pot.
The End
I never watched She Was Pretty, so I can't compare how this drama stacks up to the original. Based on previous Korean dramas I've watched, I have no great interest in ever watching She Was Pretty. Most of the internet reviews seem to say the original was better and that's not surprising. In most things, the original is better (ie. Fated to Love You). But I did find Pretty Li Hui Zhen good in that it tells a good story (along with many side stories). The characters that are not the main male lead are all very good characters. It being a comedy, I actually do find some of the elements funny though it's never LOL funny.