Curso Intensivo de Amor (2023)

Me tirou da ressaca de doramas.

O último dorama que terminei, foi Advogada Extraordinária, e puxa, eu o amei. Amei tanto que passei meses sem ver nenhum outro drama.

Começar CCIR foi uma das melhores decisões que já tomei, e eu daria tudo para assistir de novo como se fosse a primeira vez.

O dorama é bom em tudo que eu gosto, romance, drama, suspense... mas suspense? Eu não esperava isso em uma comédia romântica.

Então é essa a minha opinião sobre, sem spoilers: Trabalharam muito bem com os dramas familiares e adolescentes, mas muito mal com todo aquele plot twist que teve nos últimos episódios. Pra mim, esse dorama teria sido 10/10 se focassem somente nas dificuldades que adolescentes encaram durante o preparo para o vestibular e no romance dos protagonistas (e nos casais secundários, também). Enfim, me tirou muita risada, e o episódio 9 me deixou em lágrimas, e por isso minha avaliação é o que é.

Se você gosta de um bom haters to lovers, family found e adultos resolvendo problemas como adultos maduros, esse dorama é perfeito pra você.

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This show is INSANE

I absolutely love the writing. The plot is meticulous. Moments you don't pay attention to are brought back up and become relevant. There is never a dull moment.

The characters are so well written. The love story is realistic and really entertaining. Their chemistry is incredible. The young stars in this are also absolutely brilliant actors. The way they act their struggles is brilliant to watch.

The thing I love most about this drama is it takes tropes that at the start you really think will go a certain way, but it turns everything upside down until you don't know what to expect. Where you think the story is going, it will undoubtedly go a different way.

It also tackles issues that aren't very commonly tackled, like eating disorders in men, and other things I can't reveal because it will ruin the story.

Basically, WATCH THIS SHOW. The final two episodes are on this weekend and I can't wait!

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Messy and ill-fitting female lead

It began very interestingly with a view into the intense education demands of the country.
Characters looked different and intriguing too. The teenagers are all lovely and their friendships/ relationships were very refreshing. The female lead's brother was wonderful - very touching to watch him.

It had the tag of romance - which is the only genre I watch - so was looking forward to a different kind of story.

However the zero chemistry romance fizzled, the appeal went flat, the genre decided to embark on its own path.

The female lead was so ill-fitting in her role that it soured the whole drama. She may be considered some kind of hero in her country, but she was the least appealing. Grandmother outfits, greasy hair, bony hands of an older person pretending to be young. If she is considered a great actor then please give her intense roles. Not romcoms where she destroys the sentiment of romance.

Even the nasty mother's club had more appropriate actors.

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Overrated

I think this drama suffers from a number of flaws, just from my personal point of view, and I do not understand why it has such high ratings.

First of all, if you're not a fan of noona romances, you would not like this. I do not have problems with age gaps IRL, but I just don't like huge age gaps in my dramas. In this particular case, the actress, while being a fine woman and good at her craft, I'm sure, just somehow felt miscast for the role. She looks and feels way too old for a romance drama of this type. Sometimes it almost feels like she could be the male lead's mom or aunt. The pairing just felt cringey for me. And this is not a prejudice against older women falling in love. There are other dramas where this is given much better treatment and the romance is more age-appropriate, or the actors are better cast.

My second issue is I just did not like the male lead character at all. Not the actor per se. Just the character. I didn't hate him. But there was nothing about the character that I found attractive. He's an okay guy, a fine teacher, but other than that, the character was not developed fully and felt flat and one-dimensional almost. Even his supposed main selling point, his mathematical brilliance, was somehow not utilized enough to make you swoon for him. So with the ML's character not fleshed out and the FL being miscast, the main romance just did not do anything for me at all. Many instances where the FL, who is very ahjumma-like, is acting like a schoolgirl just felt...cringey.

The character of the younger male lead is also poorly written. In a way, he's worse than the main lead because the way he's written, he is not just undeveloped and quite generic, but he also has some glaring character flaws. After the exam fiasco, he resorted to avoidance instead of facing the issue head-on. In the interest of inserting some social commentary about how Korean students suffer from pressure exerted by parents, the writers turned him into a cowardly and immature boy who could not even be open and honest with his supposed best friend who he knew was also suffering and confused due to the circumstances. Just not someone I'd imagine falling in love with. The second teenage male lead had more spunk, more sense, and was at least always there for the female lead. Anyway, both male leads were too bland and uninteresting, and not well-developed, IMO. Just poorly written characters.

I also had some problems with the portrayal of the FL's brother. Was he supposed to have Asperger's? High-functioning autism? Somehow I feel like the portrayal was inaccurate, but I am no expert in this. And I also feel like the actor was miscast. I mean, I'm sorry. He's a fine actor. I've seen him in other dramas. But it would have been better if someone...more attractive were cast in the role so that we could swallow the sudden romance later on. That romance with the FL's best friend just felt too sudden, too forced, and just totally unnecessary. The fact that he said he treated her like an older sister all his life didn't help.

The plot itself is nothing special. It follows the usual format of the new spate of romance kdramas, where the main leads get together at episode 10, after which the plot devolves sharply into a not-that-interesting murder mystery, which, in the case of this drama, was resolved in a totally unsatisfactory way. I guess the main point of the drama is to critique Korea's obsession with academic excellence and tutoring services, and I guess they were able to get that across, at least, but the rest of the drama just feels uninspired and not that interesting.

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Boring and a waste of time

The storyline was really boring, predictable and contained too many unnecessary scenes. The actress playing the FL was a bad choice. The Fl was obnoxious. The leads had no chemistry. The only thing i liked about the show was the scenes showing how bad the education system is and it's effects on the students mental health, as well as the scenes showing how obsessed parents get when it comes to their children's education. I also really liked the students scenes they were much more fun than the leads scenes. The show wasn't funny at all, i don't get why it's labeled as a rom com. Overall I wouldn't recommend this drama to anyone

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C grade

The adults act like childish while the teenagers get all the emotional heavy stakes and interesting plot developments.

The best parts of the drama were actually the teenagers and their struggle to meet these physically and mentally taxing educational standards and expectations of their parents and society as well as the mother daughter relationship between the aunt and niece. The wildness of the the hagwon institutions like how the parents have to line up everyday to get the best seating for their children was interesting as well. The murder mystery part of the drama was okay, but it was dragged on for like 3 or 4 episodes too long. When it was revealed that the brother is a red herring and assistant guy is the murderer, that's when they should have wrapped it up.

I quite enjoy seeing pairings where both grown consenting adult characters have the female lead as older than the male lead and the corresponding actors, but the casting here is really distractingly off with the actress not looking anywhere near believable as the character age range she is portraying. It didn't really need to be a noticeable issue except for the drama itself making it awkward by throwing lines like "she doesn't look old enough to be a mom to a teenager" and showing that only a decade has elapsed between the past and the present the story takes place in. It's compounded by the fact that the costume department didn't make a single effort to at least style her to look like she's in her 30s or even 40s and always put her in clothes and hair styling that made her look very middle aged.

Her character is also like an emotionally volatile doormat, it would have been nice to see her have some smarts and effectively save or stand up for herself and her loved ones from time to time. Her version of acting cute was really off putting as well with the over the top laughing as she covers her face and violently hits whoever is in front of her. The romance plots of all of the adults were the least interesting parts of the story. None of them had chemistry and it would have been better to keep those as brief as possible. The teenagers were more interesting, I like how the two boys actually developed a friendship despite being love rivals.

For a single mom with younger man romance that also includes a serial killer plot, I recommend watching When the Camellia Blooms instead of this drama.

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Farofinha

Foi muito divertido de assistir, ria cada vez mais todo novo episódio que se passava. Como a relação dos protas foram mudando aos poucos de enemies pra collaborators e em fim lovers kkkkk. Até o triângulo amoroso secundário foi lindo de se ver, não teve aquelas intrigas besta entre os meninos, na verdade criaram uma amizade verdadeira, eu amei isso. O vilão foi meio sem sal , sem açúcar, enfim espero que o ator faça um dorama com um personagem legal na próxima vez haha
Os atores escolhidos, amei todos, combinaram certinho com seus personagens e entregaram tudo!

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I like mature romances & I especially like noona romances, so I had high hopes for this one. While I did enjoy the romance & what little comedy there was, I found the rest quite disappointing. For starters I really dislike the setting, more specifically the whole private school thing, it’s almost as if this drama is -despite the negative things that happen there- an advertisement for that horrible horrible industry. Also if that wasn’t enough, I think the whole mystery killer thing is kind of bad. To me XYZ’s sudden transformation into a cartoon villain is not a well planned whoah moment, but rather a sudden shift in live writing. (yes there is some seemingly clever foreshadowing, but things could have gone in multiple directions nonetheless) Also I think this drama has way too many annoying moms. Just one is too many, but here there seems to be an army of them..

To talk about some positives as well, it’s very nice that FL kind of looks her age, or rather what a hard working 40ish cook/restaurant owner could actually look like. While the chemistry with the ML is not that great, they do look great together! Also there is not really a breakup, nor a love triangle for them. I feel if I used my fastforward button more liberally, then I could have enjoyed the drama a lot more, focusing just on the romance aspect.

I did not like the ending either. Sure the happy endings for the couples were nice, but it's extremely annoying how suddenly all these evil characters got mini redemption arks..

So yes, as of writing this review this stands on 8.6, so the drama is HUGELY overrated in my book. While the romance is good, it’s not even close to good enough to carry the show, so I decided to settle on 6/10 as my final rating.

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Mostly strong, but fizzles from ep14 on

This is a very strong drama but had several flaws which really undermined the quality and – most damning of all – the writing of certain characters. Based on the experiences of children studying to prepare for college entrance, their teachers, and their parents. The romance is enjoyed by an elite maths teacher with an apparent inability to tolerate food, and the humble mother of one of his students: after he realises that the food from her side dish shop does not make him vomit he wants to know her better. Understandable.
Let me talk first about some of all the things that were good. Of course the acting was wonderful. It is beautifully shot in attractive locations. Characters are for the most part well rounded, and mostly the plot is character driven. The plot is engaging and charismatic, and some of the people are just lovely.
The pushy mum's are all witches though which is a bit lazy. Dads are almost universally invisible.
School work and pressures seem mostly realistic, and teachers are shown as genuinely caring – though the schools' administration and leaders are much less so.
The murder sub-plot was OK : well presented, and an interesting concept. We start to catch onto it though, and once that happens, the culprit and motive are fairly quickly identified, though the way it is resolved is rather sad.
The relationship between ML and FL is fine – I enjoyed it, but sadly the excellent writing of both characters was hugely undermined by the absymal styling for the FL. This was a major flaw and it persistently spoiled most of the drama.
It's by no means the case that a hot teacher like him could not have fallen for a frumpy, badly dressed, badly aged wee woman from a food shop, but I could not believe that, even with the responsibility of raising a child perhaps ten years younger than her, an elite athlete from a national team would have resented herself to the world like this - none of the other mums did that.
That was absolutely and damningly confirmed by the fact that once a certain part of the plot is reached, she tidies herself up, gets some decent clothes, sorts out her hair and looks hot!
Good for her, and at LAST, but pathetic styling. Shoddy. And don't blame the stylists - they are following Directors' demands.
And I think the other main failing here is that the drama could easily have ended a couple of episodes earlier.
The FL's sister turns up out of the blue. Expecting open arms. Despite the fact that ten years ago she abandoned her daughter with her "mum", and has never been in contact since. The reason for her appearing is never made fully clear, but when her daughter made a fuss saying she will return with her to Japan ... she promptly absconds again. So that worked!
I found this whole sub-plot entirely unnecessary. I make no apology for mentioning it here, because it is SO OBVIOUS from the very start. I expected it from the point at which she dumps the child in ep1.
The only reason I could see for these 2 redundant episodes was the chance to tie up the few remaining 'loose ends' for some of the characters – with better writing, that could have been done by ep14.
Overall, I expected to give this drama at least a 9 but it limps in at a mildly weak 7.5 /10 for me ... especially since waiting for new episodes was torture! Disappointing

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This Is How You Make A Show!

Not a SINGLE dull moment! Loved Crash Course In Romance from start to finish! The only flaw, so to speak, is that this is a mixed genre show with A LOT happening and that might not be appealing to everyone who love pure Romance or Rom Com dramas. But there is so much realism and amazing (as well as toxic) relationships and a wholesome storyline that you will be missing out on if you skip this drama.

What I loved:
The main plot revolves around a 30s-40s couple, their connection, their enemies to lovers journey, and their supportive nature towards each other. It's a couple that is perfect for each other. It's a bit of a slow burn romance.
The female lead's relationships:
- First with her sister's daughter who was abandoned and has been raising her in such a pure and loving way. And that upbringing has made her daughter a strong person.
- Secondly, with her brother who has Autism Spectrum Disorder. He works in the store along with her best friend. Again, it's such a supportive and understanding relationship. One can imagine how she would have had to also raise him after their mother passed early on.
- And thirdly, her friendship with her amazing and supportive best friend who runs a side dish store with her. Both are super-caring towards each other and this is a friendship we all wish we had. The best sismance!
We also see the daughter's friendships and how much they care for each other. But we also see insecurity because of the unusual family she has and has been judged in the past for.
The rivalry to bromance between the students was heart-warming.
The crazy competitive education system and how it drives students but especially their mothers bat-**** crazy.
The mystery element and the whole back story. It's a tragic one.

Normally I would write about what I disliked but I genuinely can't think of anything wrong with this show. I don't know what to criticise which is RARE. Maybe more romance would be my only expectation.

The show is a 10/10 for me! I would definitely rewatch and recommend to others!

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Beautiful execution, but some loose ends

It's really hard to execute equal amounts of romance, drama and comedy in one show, but Crash course in romance has managed to master this balance reasonably well.
I would argue that the title is misleading, as this show is so much more than just romance, to the point that I believe the romance would rank quite low in terms of the priority within the story. However, the romance aspect was not lacking in any way, its just that it was not a major part of the plot, even though it was quite enjoyable.
The casting of this show was perfect, and everyone did justice to their roles quite well. I remember Jeong Yeon Nam from it's okay not to be okay, and here too she portrayed her obsessive character wonderfully. Oh Eui SHik shined as Nam Jae woo, even though his romance with Kim Young Joo came out of nowhere. The best was Ji Dong hui and his character was quite fascinating and wonderfully done by the actor.
Now for some aspects I really enjoyed in this drama
1. The friendship between Sun jae and Geon Hoo.
Typical of many dramas, here too we had a love triangle. As someone who has come to having two guys fall for a girl, it was refreshing to see the friendship between the two boys bloom. They both liked Hae-e and while there was a sense of competition with none of them backing out, it was nice to see that it did not affect their friendship deep down. I would more such non-toxic portrayals in the future too. Also the Sua and Geon hoo angle toward the end was quite cute.
2. Dong-hui's true face.
Having watched a lot of thriller dramas, it was quite surprising how late into the drama I started doubting Mr. Ji as the one behind the metal ball attacks. Portraying him as a sweet person who really wants the best for Chi-yeol, it did not even cross my mind that he could be capable of ruthlessly killing people off. But it once it was revealed, everything he had said previously that I had merely brushed off made more sense to me. I loved the plot twist, even though a part of me really wanted him to be a good person.
3. The pressure of the education system
This story managed to highlight all aspects of the korean education system, and showed how parents, students and teachers alike are affected by this system. They also portray the consequences of fame, and how it can make or break a person's career. Seeing the mother's fight against each other in an effort to put their children in an advantegeous position was very reminiscent of sky castle and done well.

Loose Ends
1. Dong Hui's arc was cut too soon. For all the suspense surrounding the identity of the killer, I felt that the reveal to chiyeol and subsequent confrontation was too short. Felt a little underwhelming the way they dealt with the ending.

2. Hae-ee's mom leaving
It was frankly quite irritating to see Hae-ee birth mom return. But what was more irritating was the fact that Hae-ee made some stupid decisions in an effort to try and make it up to her aunt for raising her. Instead of properly showing her gratitude, she ended up pushing her aunt away, making everyone in the house sad. Haee mom leaving was the best thing she ever did in her life. But what bothered me is that we didnt get a conversation between aunt and niece in the aftermath of the mom leaving. I would have loved some family bonding time, but it was skipped over.

Overall a great watch, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in a fun, interesting watch.

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