200 Pounds Beauty (live action movie), via Crunchyroll

200 Pounds Beauty (or 200 Pound Beauty, how it's written on Crunchyroll) is a Korean movie that's a little hard for me to classify. I suppose comedy, or maybe even romantic comedy, would be appropriate. The problem with "romantic comedy," though, is that it sets up viewers to expect something they're not going to get, namely an ending in which Hanna ends up with someone. This is a spoiler, but an important one, so I'm going to say this right now: no, Hanna does not end up with Sang-jun, nor anyone else. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and the ending was still a happy one, with the potential for a romance HEA (Happily Ever After) on the horizon. Still, this movie may disappoint those looking for a traditional romance movie ending.

Synopsis:

Hanna is an overweight young lady with a sweet voice and two jobs. One job involves providing phone sex to various clients. The other job, which Hanna sees as her primary job, involves providing Ammy, a famous pop star, with her voice. Ammy dances on stage and mouths the words, while Hanna sings in the back. Every one of Ammy's albums is actually sung by Hanna.

Hanna doesn't mind doing this, is even happy doing this, because it allows her to sing and because she has a huge crush on Sang-jun (Ammy's manager? producer? I'm not sure, but he seems to handle more of the business and talent-finding side of things). Sang-jun is so kind and supportive that Hanna can't help but think maybe he actually likes her back...until she overhears Sang-jun tell Ammy that they're only using her for her voice and must be kind to her so she doesn't leave.

A distraught Hanna first tries to kill herself and then heads off to one of her phone sex clients, a plastic surgeon, and demands that he perform full-body plastic surgery on her in order to make her beautiful. The doctor reluctantly agrees and, one year later, a much thinner Hanna heads out into the world. With the help of her friend, Jung-min, she gets her old job back by pretending to be a Korean American named Jenny. Sang-jun pretty much abandons Ammy in favor of Jenny, promoting her as an all-natural, fresh-faced beauty. Jenny becomes a huge star, but the lies she has to tell and the people in her life she feels she has to reject in order to achieve that fame all weigh heavily on her. With a jealous Ammy in the sidelines, doing her best to collect evidence than Jenny is really Hanna, and Sang-jun slowly connecting the dots, will Hanna's glamorous new life unravel?

Review:

I knew watching this would probably make me angry, but I added it to my queue anyway. Most of the movie did make me grind my teeth, although I have to admit that there were parts near the end that actually made me cry. I'm not sure, though, whether those parts near the end were worth the time it took to watch the whole movie.