★★★★★
The 2007 Korean
drama starring Yoon Eun-Hye as Go Eun-Chan, Gong Yoo as Choi Han-Kyul, Lee
Sun-Kyun as Choi Han-Sung, Chae Jung-An as Han Yoo-Joo, Lee Eon as Hwang
Min-Yeop, Kim Dong-Wook as Jin Ha-Rim, and Kim Jae-Wook as Noh Sun-Ki.
Directed by Lee Yoon-Jung, written by Lee Jung-Ah and Jang Hyun-Joo, and based
on the novel (same title) by Lee Sun-Mi. 17 episodes, running one hour each.
Brief synopsis:
Go Eun-Chan is just a girl trying to support her family, so she takes on many
part-time jobs but she always seems to be stuck in financial straits! At the
same time, Choi Han-Kyul’s family is finally tired of his idle lifestyle. His
grandmother gives him an assignment to make something profitable out of a
run-down coffee shop. When Han-Kyul meets Eun-Chan by accident, the two realize
they have something to offer each other. Han-Kyul enlists Eun-Chan’s help in
creating a new coffee shop, one guaranteed to attract popularity because it
will be completely run by young, attractive men. There’s just one problem with
this relationship: Han-Kyul thinks Eun-Chan is a guy!
Meet one of the
must-sees of the Hallyu wave! This gender-bender romantic comedy is certainly
famous for a reason. Coffee Prince
won Best Drama in the 20th Korea PD Awards and the cast won several
awards for their participation. I saw it for the first time after I started
watching kdramas, but at the time I didn’t realize what was so great about it.
Revisiting it after a few years enlightened me.
This drama is
especially good at portraying emotions with few weak points to mention. I was
especially impressed by how the story illustrated Han-Kyul’s struggle over what
he understood to be homosexual feelings. Those kinds of emotions can be
conflicting or difficult to deal with. In Coffee
Prince, we watch Choi Han-Kyul suffer to the point that he decides to seek
therapy! When he gets upset with Eun-Chan after finding out she lied about her
gender, I almost can’t blame him. The man deserves at least an apology, if not
compensation!
There are so
many good lines to move our heartstrings, including one of the most famous love
confessions in all of kdrama history, but I found two to be the most
interesting. In episode 11, Han-Kyul is asked “You’re mad, but can you live without
her?” Han-Kyul thinks over this question and eventually realizes that he can’t.
He tells Eun-Chan so as he apologizes for his harsh behavior. It’s a short
question, but it tilts the scale and direction of the story enough that it
stays memorable.
Grandma is to
thank for the other one. Towards the end, Eun-Chan and Han-Kyul’s grandmother
grow closer as they spend time together, that Eun-Chan confesses that she is
seriously considering leaving to study becoming a barista. But she’d have to
leave Han-Kyul in Korea. As she weighs her options back and forth, she is told
“Those 100 reasons you don’t want to go probably aren’t as important as the one
reason why you do.” How many times do we play mind games with Murphy’s Law in
front of something we’d like to do, imagining everything that can go wrong and
finding every reason in the book not to go through with it? We might do this
with big decisions, or when we’re thinking of trying something new. But because
of those mind games and that list of reasons not to try it out, we could forget
why we wanted to do it in the first place. For that reason, that line hits
home. It hits home for Eun-Chan too, which is why she chooses to pursue her
career before returning to Han-Kyul.
The characters
are so quirky that we can’t help but love them. Choi Han-Gyul may be a drama
queen, but Gong Yoo can pull off any character well enough to completely charm
an audience. Yoon Eun-Hye was impressive in her role, as well! We’ve all seen
the gender-bender dramas in which we just can’t believe anyone could mistake
that girl for a boy, but Yoon Eun-Hye gives Eun-Chan such convincing habits that
even I was second guessing!
In an honest confession,
Han Yoo-Joo wasn’t my favorite, but think I just couldn’t understand what she
was getting at. She seemed to be unable to make up her mind about Han-Sung; did
she want to be with him or not? What did she really want him to do? Evolution
has helped us create words and speech for that kind of stuff so we don’t have
to play that kind of mind game anymore. Although she was difficult to
understand at first, she seemed to stabilize in the later episodes (to my
relief).
Throughout the
drama, it becomes clear that Coffee Prince is more than just a coffee shop for
the employees, but especially for Go Eun-Chan. It’s more than just a job. It’s
where she has friends and feels acceptance. It helps her find her passion as a
barista and a direction for her career. Everyone should have a place like that,
a place where they feel safe, happy, and inspired. As the coffee shop fills
this role from the characters, it adds an incredible amount of humanity into
the drama that we can feel and understand.
Coffee Prince is an older
drama, one of the first of the Hallyu wave, so we have to be patient with the clichés
and cinematography. But it’s so much deeper than just an older drama with a
cute story. I liked it much better visiting it the second time. It might not be
a personal favorite, but as a drama there hardly any flaws to speak of! We need
not wonder why it won so many awards.
If you can, try
to absorb some of the courage and deeper perspective from this drama. Be with
who you want to be with. Spend the time necessary with that special someone to
fall in love with who they are. Or be
brave and try something you didn’t think you could before. These are what make Coffee Prince so special and recommended
by so many. I can’t give less than 5/5 stars!
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