200 Pounds Beauty

Director: Kim Yong-hwa Kim Yong-hwa

Overview

A big gal goes to great lengths to release the beautiful woman inside in this romantic comedy from South Korea. Ami (Seo Yun) is a glamorous and sexy pop star who has a string of hit records to her credit, but what most folks don't know is she can't sing a note and the voice on her recordings is actually Hanna Kang (Kim A-jung). While Hanna has a beautiful voice, she also weighs 200 pounds, which has prevented her from having a career of her own, and while she's in love with Sang-jun (Ju Jin-mo), the producer who hired her to be Ami's voice, she lacks the nerve to tell him how she feels. When Hanna is invited to a posh party by Sang-jun only to discover Ami is wearing the same dress but in a much smaller size, she decides the time has come to make some changes. Hanna drops out of sight, has plastic surgery and liposuction, and a year later emerges as pretty and slender Jenny. No one recognizes Jenny as Hannah, and when she auditions for Sang-jun, he's certain he's found a new star to replace Ami, whose career has gone into a tailspin since Hannah went AWOL. Jenny's career is off to a great start, and she seems to have impressed Sang-jun on a non-professional basis, but Ami thinks there's something odd about this unknown singing sensation and starts doing some detective work. Minyeoneun gwiroweo (aka 200 Pounds Beauty was adapted from a popular comic book by Yumiko Suzuki.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/17/2013
UPC:	0760137584599
Original Release:	2007
Source:	Asian Media Rights
Region Code:	1
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	2:00:00
Sales rank:	47,598

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Hyeon-sook Kim	Park Jeong-min,Hanna Kang
Ju Jin-mo	Sang-jun
Dong-il Song	Actor
Hyeon-shik Lim	Actor
Han-wi Lee	Lee Kong-hak,Taxi Driver
Ji Seo-Yun	Actor
Kim Hyeon-suk	Actor
Lee Han-wi	Actor
Seo Yun-ah	Ammy
Seong Dong-il	Actor
Im Hyeong-shik	Actor
Park Noh-shik	Actor
Kim Yong-geon	Actor
Park Hwi-suk	Actor
Lee Beom-su	Actor
Ryu Seung-su	Actor
Lee Weon-jong	Actor
Lee Jae-hak	Composer

Technical Credits

Kim Yong-hwa

Noh Hye-yeong

Suzuki Yumiko

Kim Yong-hwa	Director,Screenwriter
Eun-hui No	Producer
Noh Hye-yeong	Screenwriter
Park Mu-seung	Producer,Executive Producer
Suzuki Yumiko	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

200-Pound Beauty, which had its North American premiere at the 2007 New York Korean Film Festival, is a reasonably entertaining South Korean romantic comedy, and features a winning lead performance, but it's a bit problematic that the film (based on a Japanese comic book) brings up the increasingly serious issue of cosmetic surgery (a growing trend among South Korean women) and fails to deal with it in any substantive or constructive way. To begin with, as is often the case with these comedies in which svelte actors wear a lot of prosthetic makeup in order to appear obese, Kim A-joong doesn't look like an overweight woman; she looks like some kind of mutant. As was the case with Shallow Hal, the overweight woman, Hanna (Kim) is the butt of much of the humor, at least in the first half of the film. For example, she crashes through the floorboards while singing backstage, and in one of the film's more uncomfortable scenes, shows up at a party wearing a slinky red dress several sizes too small, which she erroneously believes was sent to her by Sang-jun (Joo Jin-mo), her unrequited love interest. We're supposed to laugh at how ungainly Hanna is, while recognizing her inner beauty, but all that makeup makes her seem unnecessarily freakish, sending the comedy off-kilter. The film picks up once Hanna has her credulity straining cosmetic surgery. Writer-director Kim Yong-hwa has a clear understanding of the different way attractive people are treated in our superficial culture. In these scenes, as Hanna begins to understand her newfound power, Kim's unencumbered performance reaches new heights. She conveys Hanna's genuine confusion over the response she receives, which makes Hanna that much more attractive. It's all a fantasy, but in these scenes, at least we begin to understand its powerful appeal.