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Female friendship, retro vibes, and raucous reminiscing in Sunny
by Dramaddictally
Welcome to K-Movie Night — a once-a-month feature where we microwave some popcorn, put on a face mask, and get cozy with a Korean movie from yesteryear. With so many films finally streaming (with subs!), now is the time to get caught up on all those movies we missed featuring our favorite drama actors.
Each month, we’ll pick a flick, write a review, and meet you back here to discuss whether or not it’s worth a watch. Super simple. All you have to do is kick up your feet and join us in the comments!
MOVIE REVIEW
For our March selection, I wanted to piggyback on International Women’s Day and find a film that centered on fabulous female leads (because this might not be a drama but we still need a piggyback thrown in for good measure). With that in mind, I decided to watch Sunny, a sassy movie that basks in female friendship, kick-butt girl gangs, and the later-in-life truth that things don’t always turn out how we thought they would.
The movie generated some serious hype here on Dramabeans (as well as on the awards circuit) back when it was released in 2011, but never got its own review — until now!
The movie opens with an introduction to our protagonist, IM NAMI (Yoo Ho-jung), as a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” plays in the background (a cue that we’ll soon be reminiscing about the past). Nami is surrounded by what looks like domestic splendor. She’s got a giant apartment, a rich husband, and a teenage daughter, but right away it’s evident that something is missing for our housewife heroine.
One day while she’s visiting her mother in the hospital, she runs into her old friend, HA CHOON-HWA (Jin Hee-kyung). The two haven’t seen each other in 25 years and Nami learns that Choon-hwa is dying of cancer. She has two months to live and in that time her only wish is for their group of high school girlfriends to be reunited. With tears in her eyes, she implores Nami to get “Sunny” back together again.
From there, the film diverges into two timelines. In one, Nami works hard to track down the seven members of Sunny — none of whom have kept in contact since they left high school. In the other, we get to see the “seven princesses,” clad in Nike and Jordache, as they fight rival girl gangs and cause general chaos in the mid-80s.
The movie builds a high-energy momentum in its first hour, with laugh-out-loud ridiculousness and production values way above any 16-episode drama released in the same year. Pulling it all together into a cohesive whole is a little tough, though, when you’ve got an all-star cast of fourteen women to follow — seven who play the characters in their 40’s and seven who play the same characters as teens.
Shim Eun-kyung plays the young Nami, who’s embarrassed by her regional dialect and lack of fashion sense when she transfers to an all-girl high school in Seoul. There, she meets the six girls with strong personalities who will become her besties and break her out of her shell. Notably, Kang So-ra leads the gang as the young, brash Choon-hwa and Park Jin-joo plays the queen of cursing, HWANG JIN-HEE.
In what might be the funniest scene, the high-heeled members of Sunny walk to an empty lot in order to confront another seven-member girl gang — but the “fight” only amounts to round-after-round of trash talk. As Jin-hee and a rival use every combination of curse words they know, Nami turns the match into a quick win for Sunny by pretending she’s possessed and spewing the most foul-mouthed language any of them can imagine — which she’s heard from her halmoni (Kim Young-ok) at the dinner table.
In another scene, where we’ve segued into a storyline about Nami’s first crush, the young Nami walks home flushed and giggling, with a wad of gum stuck in her hair. The image is so unreasonable, and yet so genuine, that it’s hard not to laugh along with her. As a whole, the young cast is lively and colorful and most of the film’s fun is housed in the 1980’s timeline — although the increasingly outlandish fight scenes become less humorous (particularly when they poke fun at the era’s social unrest).
The present timeline takes on more serious topics but the movie’s insistence on keeping a light, feel-good tone from start to finish means that the dramatic moments are not as hard-hitting as they could be. It also suffers some problems as themes are initiated only to disappear or never land.
We learn that Nami was a good student, with a talent for drawing, but she didn’t pursue any of her dreams — in fact, none of the women did, leaving an air of discontent about them. At one point, Nami says she’s too old now to have dreams, to which Choon-hwa responds, “Don’t live without dreams.”
At first it seems this will be the movie’s message, but it gets kicked off-kilter when the group of grown women relive their youth by beating up some high school girls that are bullying Nami’s daughter. It’s an odd turn of events but shows us that the point here is not to see big changes in these characters in the future, but for them to reclaim the happiness they felt together in the past. In fact, when they’re finally reunited, it’s clear that the “missing thing” from Nami’s life in the opening scene was simply her friends.
While this is neither the coming-of-age story that I expected, nor a wistful look at the past, it does offer a patchwork of mini-surprises in a happily predictable package. Individual characters may lack full flesh and bones, but the group dynamics of the younger cast make up for it, offering some healthy laughs — and outfits that will certainly take you back.
Is it worth a Saturday night stream? I’d say there are enough funny moments in the first half to give it a whirl, especially if you have a girl gang of your own to watch it with.
Join me in April for the next K-Movie Night and let’s make a party of it! I’ll be watching On Your Wedding Day (2018) and posting the review during the last week of the month.
Want to participate in the comments when it posts? You’ve got 3 weeks to watch! Rather wait for the review before you decide to stream it? I’ve got you covered.
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