I don’t normally watch movies(at least not ‘drama’ movies) because I generally prefer longer-form storytelling. This movie is sort of an example of why I prefer TV dramas to movies. This movie along with the TV show of the same name(REVIEW HERE) are both based on a novel that I have not read so I don’t have that backstory. That being said, the plot is similar(if truncated) to the drama so I’m not going to talk much about that.
I hadn’t intended to watch this but I happened to see it on the front page of kissasian.com and I thought, “What the hell. Let’s give it a shot.” Overall I was really pleased with this movie, but it also really brought into focus why I thought the drama version should have been 20 episodes rather than 30.
There are quite a few differences between the movie and the drama, characters are either completely not there or combined with others to shorten the plot. But even with that, this movie felt like it was jammed and unable to take its time telling the story.
Bei Wei Wei in this movie is played by Angelababy. I’ve heard of Angelababy, of course, but I’ve never actually seen her in anything. The first thing I’ll say is that she’s absolutely stunning to look at, but while the TV drama makes a big deal out of saying repeatedly how pretty Bei Wei Wei is(to the point of being slightly off-putting), the movie does not. She’s presented as just an average girl who has a really dorky obsession with playing video games, and I like her portrayal of the character better. I found her way more relatable because she was straight up goofy at times, rather than being so quiet and austere like the character is in the TV drama.
On the other side of the coin is the portrayal of Xiao Nai(played by Jin Bo Ran). I don’t know about him. Maybe I got attached to Yang Yang’s version on the TV drama, but Jin Bo Ran’s Xiao Nai just seemed sort of blah. He didn’t have the casual arrogance or undercurrent of possessive deviousness that Yang Yang’s version had.
I feel like the movie made a lot of really great choices when it came to which storylines to focus on and which characters to use to move the plot along. The only problem is that there simply wasn’t enough time to really savor the story and the milestones as they happened. I’m honestly not sure that I would have had any idea of what was going on if I hadn’t seen the drama first.
Movie Pros:
Angelababy’s acting and character choices make Wei Wei more relatable to the average girl.
Focused on the important characters and plot lines, rather than just doing filler that gets tedious fast.
Quick watch for those not wanting to commit to 30 hours for a drama.
Movie Cons:
Yang Yang’s acting as Xiao Nai in the drama had a lot more nuance to it than Jin Bo Ran.
Very fast paced so many plot lines were left behind.
Movie Rating: 7/10
Recommend to a Friend: Yes, but also try the drama as well.
I did want to make one more comment on is the story itself from the novel to tv to the big screen. I recognize the fact that they can’t put a troll in these shows/movies, but I do wish that perhaps they’d gone with someone plainer. The impetus of the story is that Xiao Nai fell in love with Wei Wei online through her skills in the game and he respected her as a player. Why then, could they not have had a girl who was just normal looking? Why does she have to be that goddess-level of beauty? I think the story would have greatly benefited from showing a man who is good looking and successful falling for a woman purely because of her personality without the ‘bonus’ of her looking like Angelababy or Zheng Shuang.
