Customer Reviews

200 Pounds Beauty (Standard Edition) DVD

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had no expectations of the film when i started to watch but the young girl who played Hanna was adorable and drew me in to caring what happened to her character. Yes it is a bit cliche and yes the premise of this film has been done several hundred times in different ways but I really liked the film. It has a very sincere message about being liked for who you are on the inside. Its a sweet piece of cinema and I will gladly watch it again on a rainy day when I don't want to think too hard.

BE CAREFUL-This was zoned so it wouldn't play on my U.S. zoned dvd/blu-ray player. Had to watch it on the computer. Still a great movie. It would have been nice to know it was not zoned for U.S. play before I bought it. Still my new favorite movie.

This movie is a morality tale, told with warmth and humor. Miss Kim Ah Joong, a Republic of Korea singer/model/actress, has the lead role, as "Hanna." A famous "singer" actually lip-syncs the lyrics while Hanna sings the songs back stage. Hanna is secretly in love with her music producer, but she believes she has no chance with him unless she loses weight. Hanna goes into secusion in a hospital for one year while she has plastic surgery. She emerges as a beautiful and slender woman, now known as "Jenny," who is not even recognized by her best friend.

Miss Kim won "Best Actress Award" for this movie, and she sings her own songs. Her voice has a lovely sound, and is capable of a wide range. She is a very beautiful, sweet-faced young woman with a charming manner and a lovely voice.

My favorite song is the one Jenny sings in an audition for a job as singer with the producer she loves.

Miss Kim shows in this movie that she is a wonderful comic and dramatic actress. She has so many good scenes in the movie that it is difficult to site any particular one, but I suppose the first scene with her dog, named "Love," is one of the best. I also especially enjoyed the scene where she wears her first new outfit as a slender woman.

The movie is entirely in Korean except for the lyrics of one song, "She's a Beautiful Girl," which is mostly sung by Miss Kim in English. The movie does have English subtiles.

I highly recommend this movie for everyone.

I watched this film on a Singapore Airlines international flight. I was travelling with a teenager and urged her to watch it too. It was her first foreign language film and she loved it! At a couple of points in the movie she even shed a tear. She forgot all about the fact she was reading subtitles as the movie carried her away. On the remainder of our trip she was humming and singing the song "Maria" which has now been recorded and released in English by the American singer Blondie. When I returned to Korea this month I had my Korean host sing Maria at a Karoke bar we went to. The movie and song were huge successes in Korea. I thought it was a great light hearted film I would willingly watch again.

Ive always loved Korean movies - they have a very refreshing theme. This movie is wonderfully good - the best movie Ive watched this year so far!

Its about an overweight girl who had to loose weight just to get the attention - from the person she loves and for her career.

Of course, this fairy tale comedy turns out beautifully as expected, and there were many moments to shed tears where you can really feel for the girl in her journey of accepting herself from both before and after surgery.

With funny moments in between, this movie is a good movie to watch to inspire and be inspired, whether on a good or bad day.

Truly recommended :)

Anyone here a fan of Blues Traveler or at least familiar with the band? If so you might remember the video for the band's first hit "Run-around." In this video the band performs behind a wall while another "band" performs in front of the audience. With Popper weighing in at over three hundred pounds and the rest of the members not quite being eye candy, the audience is given the spectacle of a more eye appealing group. When I sat down to watch 200 Pound Beauty yesterday, it was this music video that popped into my head because this film follows the same "plot" of the music video.

Kang Han-na is a sweet woman who is blessed with an incredible voice which she uses to make a living as a phone sex operator and as a singer. However, the problem for her music producers is the fact that she is a large girl weighing in at around 200 pounds. Also, hampered by low self-esteem her grooming habits leave a bit to be desired so her image is even more hampered. However, they do not want to let go of her voice, so she is the voice of an ultra popular pop singer called Ammy who is thin and beautiful but who cannot sing a note. While not being completely content with her life, Kang Han-na gets by with the secret affection she holds for her manager Sang-jun. However, he little world is shattered at Sang-jun's birthday party when she overhears Sang-jun telling Ammy that he finds her to be hideous. At first Kang Han-na thinks of committing suicide, but instead she turns to a plastic surgeon whom is one of her phone sex customers for help. After "coercing" the man to help her, Han-na undergoes the surgery and, after a year of healing and exercise, has the bandages removed from her face revealing her new angelic looks. Armed now with beauty and thinness, Kang Han-na returns to the outside world and is determined to start a new life, but can she really shed the fact that she truly is Kang Han-na?

This type of film has been done many times before in several different countries: fat people become thin, nerds become suave playboys, etc. I was not really expecting too much from this film, but it does address body politics and the mass use of plastic surgery that is prevalent in South Korea. However, how is the character of Kang Han-na truly accepted into society as a whole? She is not accepted as an overweight girl, but in her new shiny pop star self. Does the film truly accept people of larger body types? I think not.

First, I'm going to say that I'm more than a bit disappointed with the underlying themes in the film. It was like a Korean twist of "Shallow Hal," but thoroughly Korean in the sense that the film promotes the idea that overweight people are somehow inherently not as valuable or do not deserve to be loved equally as "others." And it does a piss poor job of trying to salvage a "plastic surgery is BAD, mmm KAY?" message at the very, very end.

Oh, so it doesn't matter if overweight Hanna had the talent of a lifetime: she was overweight. BUT HEY, when she got plastic surgery in Korea, her whole life took a turn for the better, and you know what? It was "okay" to do so because she felt oh so remorseful... and oh yeah she was still beautiful. That part is always nice. Pretty easy to forgive a gorgeous talent as opposed to the real Hanna, an overweight pariah, isn't it?

Look, I liked the film and I'm not going to spend my time writing a thorough review and synopsis. The other reviewers on this board can do that for you. What I AM going to write is this: What kind of message is this film trying to convey?! (ESPECIALLY at the end during the credits! Does this not disturb anyone?)

Sure, the film was funny and light-hearted, and maybe even tugged at the heartstrings at some moments. But the bottom line is that the film is somehow JUSTIFYING plastic surgery and altering who you were naturally made to be in a nation where plastic surgery is already as common as McDonald's. If you don't believe that, ask someone who has lived in Korea or better yet a Korean themselves and they will tell you in far better detail just how common plastic surgery is there.

Let's make one thing clear clear: I am not against a film promoting woman accepting themselves for who they are, coming to grips with their body-image and learning to love themselves. What I AM against is a film promoting the idea that you are somehow unlovable or a reject in society because you are obese, or even somehow "chubby" or "slightly overweight."
And clearly, this is the case in Korea and is only proven more so by this film.

Was the goal of the filmmakers to discourage plastic surgery as a way of "improving your life," or encourage it as another means to "finding your true self and learning to love yourself" (once you're skinny, of course. Before that, you're screwed.)

All I can say is I got one message from this film: If you're somehow overweight, you will never be loved and find true happiness in this life. Sure that may hold some truth in Western society where we seem to have an anorexic standard of beauty, but by and large... is this what we want our daughters and young women to believe?

Woman should love themselves for who they really are, and the film does a poor, poor job in trying to convey this, because in the end if Hanna had become "fat" again... well, that would have been a different story, wouldn't it?

3 Stars because it was a well executed, funny, and enjoyable film. It never dragged, but it didn't sit well with my conscience in the end. And I thought American girls had it bad... man.

And no, I am not obese or overweight.

I LOVE THIS MOVIE! It's really cute and original! Great acting as well! Kim Ah Joong should have her own album though. Her singing is really great! This is a must have!

this is one of THE BEST movies ever! i have watched it about 5x and im still not tired of it. the polt, the songs, the scenes...all great! this movie is a must-watch-movie. u'll love it