2011/KBS2 I chose to watch different dramas before I decided to start on The Princess' Man, since I was not particularly enticed by the few synopses and plot introductions that I read beforehand. However, as with each new drama that I watch, more and more do I learn not to trust but a single word of these short introductory summaries. I'm not sure who writes these, but they don't do a very good job of quickly explaining what the drama is going to be about. As such, this drama was above my expectations, though I could have known a little better since there we many reviews on this and the ratings were very high for this drama. Now I do believe these ratings are somewhat justified, however the reviews for The Princess' Man do overstate things slightly, in my opinion. Dramabeans' Dahee whose writings I often enjoy due to their down-to-earth (and often cynical) approach to reviewing was far too positive in the Year-In-Review piece that was posted a few days ago, in my opinion. In the same series of Year-In-Review, javabeans goes even further to call the main leads' performances their career best, impassioned and fierce. Now while I did enjoy quite a few aspects of this drama, the acting performances of the leads was definitely not what I would highlight as an example of why this series is so good. Good it is though, that is without question. I hesitated between a 7 and an 8 for this drama, but there are simply too many small things that I take issue with, that keep me from rating this drama higher than others that I have previously reviewed here. I'll start with these issues, so we may end with the positive aspects of this drama. One of the first bones I have to pick is the OST. While there are individual tracks that are excellent, especially the Italian style songs such as Vola and Destino, they become repetitive and almost annoying quite quickly. Fortunately, we have our unofficial OST Queen (sorry to those who put value on that poll from last May, Taeyeon is great, but there is just one OST Queen;) Baek Ji Young with I Love You Too. (Granted, my bias towards Baek Ji Young in kpop is comparable to my bias towards Son Ye-Jin in kdrama, but with her work from IRIS, Secret Garden and A Thousand Day's Promise combined with this song, I have plenty of excuses!) Where the tracks by unnamed artists were used repetitively and excessively though, songs such as I Love You Too and Missing You by Park Jung Min hardly make it into the drama, which is unfortunate. Missed opportunities overall, since the individual tracks from the released OSTs are all quite good. My next issues are with the directing, costumes and overall production. If you are going to take on a Shakespeare story and turn it into an epic sageuk (historical drama) then I do expect a little more than the regular cable family drama style directing. Sure, it is not easy to find original camera angles when your drama lasts a full 24 hours as opposed to a 2 hour film, but when it is just the same as every other sitcom, it becomes exhausting to sit through. The costume design appeared to be flawless, but that also leads me to my criticism. While I understand that it is necessary to show the clear difference between distinguished nobles and slaves, everything was a little too perfect and a little too colorful in this drama. Especially within the historical context that this story moves in, I thought the costumes were just a bit too much at times. A little bit more realism would not hurt! Where it was a little too much on costume design, it was not enough in overall production. The Princess' Man was undoubtedly limited in budget and therefor choose a colorful approach to both costume design and interior decorations, as soon as the drama moves outside, we can quickly see that not much money was left to spend on scale. The 'palaces' are one example, but particularly the forces lead by friend-turned-enemy Sin Myeon, the few sword fights and the battles that play an increasingly important role as the drama progresses are inadequate in scale as well as acting skill. It may be perceived as extraordinarily unfair to draw in Hero as an example, but when we disregard the impressive special effects and immensely superior cinematography but purely look at the costume design and the scale of production in that film, The Princess' Man falls short even when taking into account the series smaller budget and historical context. In a historical drama, these are important issues that ought not to be overlooked so easily. From the individual sword fights to the production of the sets and the directing of the larger fights, this drama is seriously lacking. If any conclusion is to be drawn from this, it ought not to "reignite hope for Korean dramas", but rather serve as a reminder that they still have a very long way to go when it comes to assigning priorities in production value. The acting however in The Princess' Man is overall very acceptable. From the large cast, I will highlight those individuals whose performances were most notable, be it in a good or a bad sense. To keep the thought of unfairly comparing Hero with The Princess' Man just a little longer, I will start off with Gisaeng house mistress Cho-Hee (played by Chu So-Young. It reminded me instantly of Zhang Ziyi's role in House of Flying Daggers. When she appeared for the first time in The Princess' Man, I had to look twice to make sure it wasn't actually her. This role was made for her and I hope casting agencies will take notice of this small support role that she plays so well. I was not so impressed by the performances of the supporting antagonists to the story, mainly the father of officer Sin Myeon but also the other conspirators (and later ministers). They all came off as flatly written narrow minded characters that were further impeded by uninspiring performances. The same goes for many of the other elder support cast (with the exception of Se-Ryung's parents and Seung-Yoo's father) whose performances I normally value in drama series. Perhaps they were instructed by the director to force their emotions too much, as they all suffered from this same issue. The acting of the two leads was decent, though main lead Kim Seung-Yoo (Park Si-Hoo, the Romeo of the story) pulls off yet another stiff performance much like in Prosecutor Princess. I am more pleased with Moon Chae-Won's performance as Lee Se-Ryung, Juliet of the story. Her emotions most likely brought in the largest part of the high ratings that this drama has enjoyed. She forces it a little too much at times as well, but does adequately well overall. Many have praised main antagonist Kim Yeong-Cheol as Grand Prince/King Sooyang for his acting in The Princess' Man and even though I am not sure if it is entirely worthy of the title of Best Supporting Actor given in this years dramabeans.com Editors' Picks, he does perform very well as he fights his personal battles and conflicts with those around him, but also with himself. In order to not make this review even longer, I'll skip the rest of the cast save for the most spectacular performance done by Hong Soo-Hyun as Princess Kyung-Hye. Without a doubt the best of the entire cast, her character is well written but the way in which she conveys the various transformations of her character over the course of the series is not rivaled by any other member of this cast. I will make sure to see more of her films and series and definitely hope that she will star in many more to come. I'll finally spend a few words on the script and the overall writing. It's a mixed bag, as is this entire drama really. A properly executed Romeo & Juliet is unlikely to be unsuccessful and that is translated in the series well deserved ratings. There were however, moments when I felt that the series was starting to repeat itself. Especially after Se-Ryung admits to siding against her father the series paces up so quickly that it becomes meaningless. Then she's captured, then she's not captured, imprisoned, not imprisoned, in the palace, with the princess, hiding somewhere. All this over the course of two or three episodes is simply too much. Luckily most of that can be overlooked since it coincides with the introduction of a whole new support cast from the Gisaeng house. This additional dimension is very much welcomed as the other story lines were becoming tiresome. This contrasting experience resembles for the rest of the script as well and overall it manages to keep you interested, but at the same time it does very much draw out up until the very last episode. For some odd reason, that comes across as very much hurried as if they suddenly had to cut down on the number of episodes. The ending comes off a little bit of a cop out, but by then you've already had a hell of a ride, so it doesn't really hurt the series too much. Overall, I would definitely recommend this drama to anyone who is looking for one to entertain themselves. As per the criticisms I mentioned above, I can't give it more than a 7 out of 10, but whoever isn't looking at the details and just wants their addictive drama, this is a great stuff. 7/10 http://www.reddit.com/r/KDRAMA/comments/nti3d/the_princess_man???_??_2011kbs_the_joseon_romeo/