How to Buy a Friend (2020)

Pretty but ordinary

There has only been a handfull of korean dramas which surprised and amazed me with their cinematography: Search:WWW, Into The Ring, Call It Love and this one.

Unfortunately that is the only thing this drama has going for it. The rest is just a repetitive, subpar storytelling using the usual high school topics: bullying, suicide, gossip, internet. Here they added prostitution, kidnapping and corrupt politicians. And to top it all there are two half hearted romances. All of this has been crammed into eight 30minutes extremely long episodes. Each episode felt like it was two hours long!

The acting was ok though I am still trying to figure out why the main lead had to have such a heavy accent. I suppose that it was to show he lives in another region but he is the only character in this drama with such a heavy, singsong, uncomfortable to listen to local accent. His father does sometimes but that's it. No one else speaks with this accent so, why does he need to? The other main character, was also a stereotypical mountain of a person, taciturn and menacing in appearance (I mean, don't start me on that upside down triangle haircut!). I liked how their bromance made them each personally grow.

The main characters were rather realistic, all too human with very ordinary, normal reactions faced with extraordinary menace (bullying, threats, violence, blackmailing). They are not heroes so they are easy to identify with!

The rest of the characters were very sketchy, superficial and often clichés: the unsatisfied teacher, school bully in a colourful jacket (he has to be seen to be different!), nerdy insecure friends (they were quite interesting: the three such characters dealt with their insecurities differently. We were shown what should and what should not be done in such cases!), one pair of loving parents (the other teens seem to be orphans: we never see their parents!) and of course the bad guy or to be precise the bad woman, who was again such a cliché.

The music was fine: heavy rock which suited the topic of the drama perfectly. There were a couple of funny scenes usually involving the MC's best friend (hypnosis and candles!).

So why am I rating this so high? Because of the cinematography. That is the only feature that actually made me finish this drama!

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Deceiving looks

Despite being a short one, they wasted so much time on other matters instead of the main objective that's the "dead girl". The investigation/mystery became a side plot and this ended up being a short teen romance drama. Hardly okay!

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