My Girl (2006)

Every time it snows it's your birthday

*very minor spoilers

Award winning actress Lee Da-hae plays Joo Yu-rin, a drifter and streetwise tour guide. Her language skills get her in the stead of a hotel executive Gong-chan (Lee Dong-wook) who needs her to use all her other skills to save his dying grandfather. It seems granddad has one last wish before dying - to see his long lost granddaughter. Yu-rin is hired to pose as granddaughter and that would also mean her playing as Gong-chan's cousin. Not easy to do when she starts to fall for him.

As the story unfolds, a love triangle emerges while Yu-rin must also look after her own deadbeat dad. There are several side stories involoving people in Gong-chan's family and also friends of Yu-rin which were quite enjoyable.

Enough cannot be said about the acting performance by actress Lee Da-hae. She was simply brilliant and I believe she did in fact win an award for this series. What guy would not want to marry her after watching this? Her performance was on par with that of Song Hye-kyo from Full House.

The series spans 16 episodes and does a pretty good job at not being too repetitive. It does however have many moments of silliness and wasted time on scenes that might look cute on the drawing board, but should have been left on the cutting room floor. That extra time would have been better spent on some of supporting characters and their situations. Yu-rins best friends brother becomes interested in Gong-chans secretary and I would have loved to see that relationship given more time and perhaps interwoven into the main story line somehow. There was also a battle going on between the two elder ladies that was well done, but I wanted more.

Eventually we reached the critical point in the series and the tissue box started to empty quickly.....THEN.....in what could have been a heartfelt clinching series of events near the final act, turned out instead to resemble an obsession. Watching the male lead pursue Yu-rin after she was spotted, made me feel uncomfortable and it also spoiled the mood that had been setup so well earlier. It was not necessary and besides, we already had someone else pursuing her out of some type of strange lust, do we really need two half-crazy obsessed men? Of the Korean dramas I have seen so far, when the women pursues the man it resembles a work of art, but when it's the mans turn, sometimes it feels like stalking.

I think one of the problems is that the makers of the series are trying to get a certain number of episodes, instead of it just proceeding naturally as it should. Despite these setbacks, the final act itself was delivered very nicely, and if you do not cry then you are not human.

My recommendation is that this series is worth a purchase, rental or however you can see it. It has its flaws, but with Lee Da-haes performance and the high tear-jerker factor, you will enjoy the journey. After watching it you might even shed a little tear every time you see it snow.