My Love from the Stars

My Love from the Stars

9.5/10

My Love from the Stars

Genre:                                   Episodes: 21                       Year: 2014

Romance

Fantasy

Mystery

Historical

Synopsis:

An alien crash lands in Korea during the Joseon period and he is unable to return to his home planet for many years. While on Earth, he meets a young girl who is bright and innocent despite her many hardships.

400 years later, the alien is living as Do Min Joon- a quiet man who views humans as inferior and does not engage with the world. However, this begins to change when he meets Cheong Song Yi- a top actress with a striking resemblance to the girl he knew 400 years ago.

Cast:

Kim Soo Hyun (Do Min Joon)

Jun Ji Hyun (Cheon Song Yi)

Yoo In Na (Yoo Se Mi)

Park Hae Jin (Lee Hwi Kyung)

Shin Sung Rok (Lee Jae Kyung)

General Thoughts:

This was the first K-Drama I ever watched, and after completing it I wondered if I had ruined K-Drama for myself as I could hardly believe that anything I ever watched in my life would be as good as this.

This drama has the perfect amount of comedy to keep it from becoming too heavy, but maintains a continuously fast-moving plot (which I have found many other K-Dramas struggle with).

‘My Love from the Stars’ really takes a little part of almost every genre: with the mystery giving it an exciting edge over most other romance dramas.

The main female lead is also not your typical defenceless, weeping K-Drama heroine who is constantly in need of a hero, but is fiery and rather arrogant- yet never becoming an unlikable character.

Our Hilarious Heroine

The cast was basically pitch perfect- right down to the small roles, and paired with solid writing and a racing plot, it deserves its mass popularity and rave reviews.

What Was Great:

Oh so, so, so many things. But here are the main ones:

Kim Soo Hyun:

Kim Soo Hyun is superb (as usual) and is the perfect fit for this role. I don’t think any other actor would have been able to bring Do Min Joon to life the way Kim Soo Hyun did. He has the magical ability to be able to remain completely stoic and expressionless, be awkward, cry, or laugh just the exact amount for the character. And being basically physically flawless doesn’t hurt either. They virtually created the perfect man. Swoon.

Physical Perfection

Strong Female Lead:

Queen of Sass

As mentioned before, it was delightful to have a strong female character, as so many K-Drama heroines are pretty- yet delicate and useless. While at times Cheon Song Yi was harsh, rude, and a bit of a b*tch, she was never an unappealing character, and you looked for reasons to like her and be on her side.

Paired together with Kim Soo Hyun, the two made an onscreen couple that was a joy to watch. They just look so ridiculously good together.

People Logic:

So many dramas I have watched since this  lack a basic understanding of how people would actually react in situations. I didn’t fully understand the wonder of this until several dramas later when I realized I would often be left thinking ‘who would actually do that?’ while watching. All characters act in completely logical ways, and you can understand their motives for doing the things they do, and this was (thankfully) consistent throughout the whole drama.

What Wasn’t:

Logic Logic:

A lot of the science began to fall away a bit towards the end of the drama, and a lot of small questions were left unanswered. While all the main points of the drama were tied up nicely, there were little holes in the science story that bothered me. They didn’t really continue on with the idea that Do Min Joon got sick from human saliva. Towards the end he was snogging Song Yi with no apparent repercussions. Also (and this could just be me being dense) do Min Joon’s powers still weaken? I’m still not really certain how that plot-point was resolved as I was left thinking that he’d never actually returned to his planet, but was hanging out in limbo in a wormhole until he could make it back to Earth. Not major holes in the story, but would have been nice to know.

The Ending:

It's not a BAD ending, but it's not really GOOD either. However, when considering how often K-Dramas completely botch the final few episodes- it comes out looking pretty clean. But I still found it a little disappointing considering how stellar the rest of the series was. There were so many ways they could have wrapped things up- and the writers ignored all of them! It literally just kind of ends. Apart from Do Min Joon, Cheon Song Yi and Lee Jae Kyung, none of the characters get properly resolved- which is beyond irritating. Who is that with Yoo Se Mi on the red carpet? Is it Lee Hwi Kyung or not?

A little bit like how I felt at the end

And even with the two main leads, apart from them already being together (which we all knew would happen anyway), we aren’t given much. So Do Min Joon is just sometimes there and sometimes not? What about the media? Everyone saw him teleport- does the world know about his alien-ness? And how do Song Yi and Min Joon address the issue of her aging and him remaining the same? Even Kim Soo Hyun admitted that he would have liked the drama to address some of these issues before the end. Oh well, still a fantastic drama.

Would I Watch Again?

Yes, absolutely. If I hadn’t wasted so much of my life on things that weren’t K-Drama and didn’t have a huge amount of series to get through, I’m sure I would’ve watched it multiple times already. As it is, once I catch up on all the dramas I have, this will probably be one of the first K-Dramas I revisit.

So much cute