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As a fan boy of the original movie, I don’t think there’s a better quote than this to describe how the remake of the original My Sassy Girl fares.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. – Antoine de Saint Exupery

Sometimes, perfection should be left alone. Director Yann Samuell seems to think otherwise though. I suspect the only good thing he did for the remake is to cast a really gorgeous girl, Elisha Cuthbert, and even she couldn’t save the show.

Admittedly, trying to remake a show that’s so perfect is difficult but at least try to be as related as possible? If there’s a need, copy it full sale since it’s a Hollywood remake of a Korean show with Hollywood cast there’s no need for creativity, no?

Can’t stop narrating

What made the original so great is that instead of narrating everything, emotions are shown through the acting. Take for example, you can feel that the main actor falling deeper in love with the female lead during the piano scene when he took off his mask and follow through with the flower giving, mildly dazed. And then it ended very romantically with the close-in shot portraying the couple in their own world.

What did the remake do? Narrated a whole lot, and ended with a really unromantic line from the actress: I don’t wear underwear on days I play the piano. ’nuff said.

Hell with dialogues

Rewriting the dialogues during the scene when the 2 of them were being held hostage by the soldier is really a bad idea. The original storyline revolves around letting go of love, moving on with life and accepting new love as can be seen when the sassy girl told the soldier if it’s not true love that he shares with his girlfriend, then it’s of no point holding on to it after she’s decided to move on on her own, and it’s time to let go (the same way the sassy girl’s trying to forget her own boyfriend’s demise).

Oh, and the dialogue of Jordan with the old man couldn’t be more corny, and I couldn’t relate to how sad the letter was when she read it non-nonchalantly that she could actually start crying. In the korean version, all she had to do was to listen to a “number not in service” and my tear ducts started working. Masterpiece.

The sassiness

The directory had also decided to take away the Sassy out of My Sassy Girl — all the unreasonable slapping and beating disappeared in this show, and the dialogue during the slapping game about the sun, the moon, how the reason he was given birth is because of her, all gone. Not cool, not cool at all. That is exactly how you show that she is sassy — by saying all those nonsense — and the director had them removed. Epic fail.

The cut scenes

I couldn’t blame the director for not including the director’s cut scenes but if he did, it would have added greater depth to the story. The original version that I watched fortunately included the scene and I can’t be more thankful for that.

The ending

I still can’t believe the director could screw up the ending.

First, he positioned the girl in the direction that she could see Charlie when he entered the restaurant. In the original, we couldn’t see him until the auntie started pinching his cheeks and the look on sassy girl was priceless.

Second, he made them kissed. I am sorry but that totally ruined the entire show. The original had them holding hands under the table with no cliched dialogue, and that’s timeless.

Conclusion

There are many more negative modifications from the original but that’s all I am going to mention. In conclusion, the dialogues were bad, the screenplay could be better, and I couldn’t bear talking about it more.

To be fair, like I mentioned earlier, I’m a My Sassy Girl (Korean) fan boy so it matters to me that this remake misses the mark. You could think otherwise, but that doesn’t make the show any better in my opinion. Besides this show is not without its merit: Elisha Cuthbert is really hot though she too misses the mark as a sassy girl.

Nice try, but let’s move on to better remakes like The Lake House where the main leads actually have chemistry.