TV Binge: Put Your Head on My Shoulder (致我们暖暖的小时光, 2019)

Put Your Head on My Shoulder (致我们暖暖的小时光, 2019)

Cast: Fair Xing, Lin Yi, Daddi Tang, Zheng Ying Chen, Zhou Zi Xin, Yi Sha, Zhou Jun Wei, Zhang Hao Lun, Jie Bing

As Si Tu Mo’s graduation is nearing, she is confused about her future plans. She tries out all sorts of things all the time and is unable to make her own decisions. Her ordinary days are suddenly shaken up when the genius Physics student Gu Wei Yi appears in her life. The two accidentally end up living together and chaos begins. – MyDramaList

Watch on YouTube or Netflix (as of December 11, 2019):

QUOTES/SCENE

STORY

Set in the same universe as A Love So Beautiful (review) with some characters that actually overlap as they get mentioned in the little details here and there, Put Your Head on My Shoulder is an adaptation of a novel written by the same author as the previous one.

This world of stories is all about quick and light-hearted romance whether its boy chases girl or girl chases boy, more so the former in this case, which adds a lot of fun tidbits here because we have a genius scientist who doesn’t know much about the whole outside who ends up meeting a girl who is almost the opposite of him but bubbly and positive. Just as she learns how to face up to her own future, her appearance changes him as he starts doing the silliest of things to get her attention including a lot of searches for weird tips from the internet. While the story itself is fairly generic as most of these TV dramas tend to be, this one has some fun surprises in simply highlighting the awkward mind of a scientist when met with love. It also is a step further into the future as this one sees the two in their final year of university and getting ready to head into the work life or pursuing higher education.

LENGTH/PACING

Episodes: 24
Episode length: 45 mins approx.

Put Your Head On My Shoulder has the perfect formula for being a good length in episodes and series length. Its one that has enough episodes to create good pacing for both its leads and still have time for the supporting characters to have their stories and adds enough depth to care but never drags on with any element of their life as the scenes progress just like the relationships and the feelings for each other.

And if you think that this 24 episodes isn’t enough, you can even watch an extra story here (which isn’t available on the Netflix version):

CHARACTER/CHEMISTRY

Situ Mo & Gu Wei Yi

The main focus for the show is the two main leads, Mo Situ (Fair Xing) and Wei Yi Gu (Yi Lin). These two steal the show because of not only their chemistry with each other but the fact that they both are peculiar but also very fun characters that stand well alone and makes things even more sweet or hilarious whenever they are together. In many ways, they are the typical opposites attract because Gu Wei Yi is just an introvert scientist/researcher who is very set in his own ways whereas faced with Fair Xing’s more direct and noisy attitude and completely not interested in his scientific knowledge that it becomes this curious discovery that brings a lot of joy into his life and it challenges the side of him that wants to keep learning more about her and the way she acts. It brings in a lot of funny awkward moments in after episode snippets (just like A Love So Beautiful) and also more and more cute and sweet moments as they start finding their rhythm together.

Wang Shan & Fu Pei

Being roommates and best friends of the previous couple, this relationship became the aftermath of the beginning of Fu Pei and Mo Situ’s friendship and possible relationship that never happened and in the process brought forth this friendship and eventual feelings for each other. The supporting relationship is very much in the background but these two characters actually are the one that is the bridge to A Love So Beautiful and builds the link together. These two have a different type and style of relationship and while its not completely necessary, it has its fun moments.

Parents, Friends and Love Interests

As with more dramas and their relationships, the use of their parents and the various personalities is a staple. In this case, they both have a very opposite type of personality while each of them both hoping that they could both be together, a rather open-minded concept for Chinese parents to let single young adults (boy and girl) but its a nice change in times sort of parents which is pretty fun most of the time to watch as they aren’t that frequently used here.

However, the funniest bits of the show does go to the other scientists at the lab, Lei Zhou (Hao Lun Zhang) & Professor Jiang (Jie Bing) helping Wei Yi Gu with his romantic problems as they usually just make it worse and think too alike for Mo Situ to understand their intentions. The three become this bromance bond that truly has so many comedic moments that adds into the fun.

Of course, what drama would be complete without even the slightest form of someone trying to come between the relationship even if its only at the literal slightest level of interest as Mo Situ starts her internship and ends up being the main assistant on set for any advertisement related by this growing star, ZhiCun Lin (Jun Wei Zhou). He never becomes quite the intrusion and was relatively underused but still the scenes with him were still rather fun.  On the side note, I really do like Jun Wei Zhou quite a bit from this first acting gig and really hope that he will have more of this although he’s more in the psychological analysis (as that’s his academic forte and his part in Dream Space) as well as singing or songwriting or something of the sort.

OVERALL

Much like its previous series set in the same world, Put Your Head On My Shoulder is a feel-good series. Its positive and down to earth. Its not exactly doing anything too different but the writers who put together the character of Wei Yi Gu really did try to get into a mind of being the awkward scientist who sees the world in a new light because of this girl that suddenly ends up housing with him and awakening some feelings and learning about a world other than one where he runs his own life. Its fun and sweet and comedic and well-balanced. Its one that can be watched over and over again and just feel all happy to see these two whether together or apart or as friends as well as those supporting roles around them, who all add a little something.

MAIN THEME

Double Feature: Love O2O (2016) & Escape Room (2019)

Welcome to the a long overdue double feature. There’s nothing in common with these two films. I skipped over a few movies that I saw in between everything in the last month or two that I don’t really want to write about. You can see what I watched and ratings over on my Letterboxd so here we are with this random double feature with Love O2O (also called Just One Smile is Very Alluring) which is a Chinese romance and then the second is a horror movie from earlier this year called Escape Room.

Love O2O (微微一笑很倾城, 2016)

Director: Tianyu Zhao

Cast: Angelababy, Boran Jing, Yu Bai, Janice Wu, Songyun Tan, Yi Cheng, Jiuxiao Li, Xian Li, Zijie Wang

A college stud tries to level up his relationship with a computer science major after becoming attracted to her skills in an online role-playing game. – Netflix

Its odd to see that a movie adaptation and a TV series adaptation of a novel is done in the same year however that is what happened with Love O2O. Both are available on Netflix right now and I had recently reviewed the TV series HERE. Its hard to not compare the two so while the movie is a much more shrunken size of the TV series with some of the characters in the movie version carrying multiple roles that different people played in the TV series. I have never read the source material so I don’t know which is the more accurate adaptation. The movie did get released before the TV series in 2016 so it works fairly well as a standalone film.

Love O2O is pretty fun. Perhaps because there is comparison, the film feels much more rushed because it has limited time to cover different elements from romance to fulfilling a game development dream and friendship which are three elements that make this story really good in the first place. The film itself works best because its one of the more positive stories on all elements. Sure, it adds a little drama with the young developers and friends hitting their first roadblock but it never breaks out of the idea of being a team and staying positive and working together to move forward. The message here is one that deserves a lot of attention and encouragement.

On the romance side of things, Angelababy works really well as the female lead. She fits the role very well especially with her interaction with Boran Jing. They do have a certain level of chemistry. Its hard to really picture Boran Jing in a romance film like this usually but oddly, he kind of grows on you because the character still fits him. It could all come from comparisons to the TV leads as well for myself and expectations but the differences here work also.

Fact is, Love O2O as a film has less depth because it doesn’t have the time to explore a lot of what its tackling. The story itself works better as a TV series but there are a lot of elements here that make this fun watch and still works in its own way.

Escape Room (2019)

Director: Adam Robitel

Cast: Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Jay Ellis, Tyler Labine, Deborah Ann Woll, Nik Dodani, Yorick Van Wageningen

Six strangers find themselves in a maze of deadly mystery rooms and must use their wits to survive. – IMDB

It seems that the theme of 2019 is to make sure that there are no more fun and exciting activities in life to do as a lot of them are potentially great horror movie premises from seeing Aquaslash which make water slides slasher territory to now Escape Room being too real for its own good for its participant, its really a crazy world out there. All jokes aside though, Escape Room is a premise with a lot of potential seeing as its kind of like Saw pretty much but without the gruesome bits of losing body parts and bloody messes. With an entire cast other than Deborah Ann Woll that I had never seen, this one didn’t seem to have the star power (or maybe it did and I wasn’t aware) and had a decent premise and had the potential to do well. Did it? Its a yes and no answer for that one.

Its a yes because the escape room elements worked really well for the most part. The setup from the starting reception area that turned out to be the first room that turned into a gigantic oven all the way to solving one area to the next, the stakes were higher and higher. At the same time, the story was meant to link together with one character as escape rooms tend to be structured as while also giving a reason for why these six strangers were chosen to take part in this escape room. I’m not going to sell that this movie isn’t a whole stretch of imagination on that point because most people if they received a mysterious cube inviting you to participate in an escape room game probably wouldn’t accept it, no matter the prize because even if it wasn’t a death trap, its probably a  scam because normal people, let alone corporations, won’t give away free money. However, point is, the movie does make the effort to give these characters justification to why they even chose to accept to join this Escape Room game in the first place obviously without knowing that it was a sinister plan. So with that said, while some of the characters were slightly annoying, they did have a certain balance to it all.

Where it doesn’t work is that the final act really lets it down. For one, the movie starts where the final act will potentially happen at the end of the film which already is a big giveaway on who makes it and doesn’t in the grand scheme of things. It isn’t a good way to make these things happen especially if character elimination is part of the whole game. With any of these thrillers, there has to be a twist to give it the surprise element and in this case, it is so very obvious.  Going right back to my point on why the film doesn’t work, the final act is just pushing the story too far and then it doesn’t end but decides to wrap things up some more while teasing a second film (probably if it does well). Its a pity because the potential was there and it was pretty thrilling even if some rooms was just more of a passerby than a piece of a complex puzzle.

Christmas Belle (2013)

Next up in the holidays movie marathon is Christmas Belle. Its something of a modernized holiday spinoff of Beauty and the Beast which as some of you know, I’m a huge fan of twisting fairy tales. Cinderella and Snow White are two very popular properties that get the spinoff treatment but I have yet to see Beauty and the Beast (except for Beastly which was okay…I think). With that said, Christmas Belle falls into my soft spot so it already has some points before we start.

Let’s check it out!

Christmas Belle (2013)

Director: Alex Wright

Cast: Haylie Duff, Nicholas Gonzalez, Mark Famiglietti, C. Thomas Howell, Sheree J. Wilson, Jerry Hauck

IMDB didn’t really have a decent synopsis so here’s my version: Isabella Everhart is sent by her father to document the Lowell estate passed down to Hunter Lowell. Hunter Lowell is a grumpy guy with a lot on his mind and rudely rejects Belle’s appearance however due to his urgency to get everything done before Christmas, reluctantly accepts the arrangement. He is hard to approach and while Belle enjoys this job and the library full of rare books and gets to know the housekeeper Angie very well, her eagerness to prepare the house for the estate sale gets her in trouble when she rearranges a room she isn’t allowed into. However, this breaks the ice a little between her and Hunter as he tries to make amends to her for his behavior. As they know each other more, they become closer and its here that long time friend Tony enters the town with her father to show his love for her with big gestures and a few lies.

Christmas Belle plays along with the Beauty and the Beast plot line quite closely. Of course, while Hunter is not called The Beast and his dog is, it somehow hints that Beast growing a fondness for Belle is an overshadow of what is to happen, which to be honest, we all already know the ending. However, regardless of that, Hayliee Duff and Nicholas Gonzalez has a lot of chemistry as their relationship gets closer. It still lacks some depth and feels a little disjointed but they are incredibly charming together and its hard to not fall in love with the genuine feelings between them. Of course, Tony (played by Mark Famiglietti) shows up and tries to break them apart and its here that my frustration for Hunter shows that I have bonded with him because his easiness to believe lies becomes quite irritating as many male romance films tend to build them that way where they falter when doubted and stop believing the girl that they know more and not this bozo that shows up claiming things. Who do you trust, right? Its pretty obvious but it never happens that way. Of course, its the conflict that they need to resolve to get their happy ending. To be fair, its expected and I did enjoy a lot of this whole going on because bonding with Belle and Hunter was part of the deal to hoping they will get together (even if this is one of those movies that it will happen).

With that said, Christmas Belle does have some issues. Lets start with something good that leads to something bad. The good part is that the setting of the estate is absolutely beautiful. Its a mansion with a beautiful interior decorating and the land around it is a vineyard with a lovely barn and a covered bridge. Its picturesque. The town itself is wonderful as well being homey and charming. However, the direction of the film wants to make it more dramatic than it is or just that they had an obsession with the score. With that came segments of showing a shirtless Nicholas Gonzalez doing his morning run two or three times to some orchestral music which was slightly unnecessary and over the top. There were other scenes that were more fitting like lens flares on Christmas lights in a decorating scene with some nice orchestral music as well that worked better. However, the score was so loved that in one part it actually overpowered the dialogue between Belle and Hunter.

Overall, Christmas Belle had a little bit of good and bad. It could have used with a less of flaunting the score and overdoing it. Some scenes felt downright unnecessary. At the same time, the source material works for a Christmas theme. Haylie Duff and Nicholas Gonzalez both do a great job as Belle and Hunter and are completely believable as the leading couple here to root for. There are some over the top sappy dialogue but it stay nice and fluffy and the feel good factor here is pretty decent. Although there’s one part that Belle threatens to punch Tony and I wish she did but I think these movies have something about not having violence and foul language so probably thats why it didn’t happen. Still, its a little average but relatively enjoyable.