“The Dude in Me” is a 2019 Korean drama movie, categorized as Supernatural or Fantasy, Romance, and Comedy, and is currently available on many of the popular streaming platforms. An alternate title is “The Man Inside Me”.
♦ Why am I in this Guy’s Body?
In “The Dude in Me”, Jang Pan-Soo is a gangster. There is no way to put that nicely. Even though he walks around in suits and meets with others in buildings to discuss “biz-ness”, he’s still a gangster. He and Oh Mi-Sun were in a romantic relationship. Everything was fine until she found out that he was a gangster. She asked him to choose: life with her and life as a criminal. He chose to be a gangster. For that reason, she broke off their relationship.
Time passed and his criminal activities kept him so busy Jang Pan-Soo did not have much time to think about Oh Mi-Sun. What was her life like without him? Was she happy? Did she marry? He got married, although he wasn’t happy with his marriage. His wife was the daughter of a wealthy man and their marriage was convenient. They had no children.
One day he was driving to “work” and had to stop because the road was blocked. He got out of his car and while he was standing, a young high school student, Kim Dong-Hyun, fell off a rooftop. When the boy fell he landed on top of Jang Pan-Soo. They were both rushed to the hospital. When Jang Pan-Soo regained consciousness, he was shocked to find that he was in the body of a high school student. He walked around the hospital until he found his own body. He saw himself lying on a bed in a coma. WHAT’S GOING ON?
Kim Dong-Hyun’s father was at the hospital and when he saw his son was alive and walking around, he took him home. It took a while for Jang Pan-Soo to understand what had happened to him, but he had to accept his new body. That meant he had to go to school. When he arrived at school, he realized that the kid whose body he now occupied was being bullied. Not only him but there was Oh Hyun-Jung, a girl the boy liked and she was also being bullied.
The bullies, not realizing who Jang Pan-Soo was, thought they could continue pushing Kim Dong-Hyun. They were in for a rude awakening but it didn’t take long for them to realize they couldn’t push him around anymore.
He found out Oh Hyun-Jung was being bullied and followed her, he ran into her mother, Oh Mi-Sun. He was shocked to see her again and was even more shocked to discover that Oh Hyun-Jung was his daughter. Oh Mi-Sun never told him that she was pregnant. He was disheartened when he realized she and her daughter were living a difficult life. She was not happy and she had not married. She is a single mom raising a teenage daughter that kids picked on because there was no father.
It didn’t matter that Jang Pan-Soo had swapped bodies with Kim Dong-Hyun, he was going to do everything that he could to make his former lover and his daughter happy.
Main Characters:
- Kim Dong-Hyun (played by Jin Young, “Miss Granny”, “Police University”, “Love in the Moonlight”)
- Jang Pan-Soo (played by Park Sung-Woong, “Monstrum”, “Love, Lies”, “The Killing Vote”, “Bloodhounds”, “Unlock My Boss”, “Man to Man”)
- Oh Mi-Sun (played by Ra Mi-Ran, “The Good Bad Mother”, “The Highway Family”)
- Oh Hyun-Jung (played by Lee Soo-Min, “Revenge of Others”)
Viewership and Rating:
- IMDb: 6.9 out of 10 stars
- My Drama List: 8.3 out of 10 stars
- Letterboxd: 3.2 out of 5 stars
- Google users shared a public rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars
- Viki viewers rated this film 9.6 out of 10 stars
My personal rating is the same as the Viki viewers.
The two male leads were so good at playing the body-swap characters. One of the reviewers said, “it’s nothing new”. Yeah, I know that. But the truth is ~ both you know it and I know it ~ everybody likes it when the bullies and bad guys get a taste of their own medicine. Seeing bullies and bad guys get slapped around makes you laugh!
One other thing that I liked was the fact that the father trained his daughter how to defend herself. She doesn’t need to wait for some guy to come and rescue her from peril. OK. So chivalry is not dead. But there’s no reason why a female can’t be empowered to kick butt when she needs to defend herself. Am I right, ladies? LOL.
LINKS OF INTEREST:
[Film Review] The Dude in Me | The Korean Lass
Film Review: The Dude In Me (2019) by Kang Hyo-jin | Asian Movie Pulse
The Dude in Me – fun and bubbly, but nothing new | Cinerama Film
‘The Dude in Me’ needs more depth, pizzazz | The Shield
TRAILERS/TEASERS:
BFI. “THE DUDE in ME Trailer | BFI London Film Festival 2019.” YouTube Video. YouTube, August 30, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efHY_fF-RJ8.
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