Intimate Strangers: Fickle iPhones

How dumb is it to play a tell-all smart phone game with your nearest and dearest? Pretty dumb if you've got anything to hide, as do all the vivacious guests at this increasingly tense housewarming party where each has foolishly agreed to share any incoming messages or calls with everyone else at the table. They're not the first to make this mistake either. Director Lee J. Q.'s Intimate Strangers was inspired by Paolo Genovese's award-winning Italian movie Perfect Strangers (2016) which already had Álex de la Iglesia's Spanish variation of 2017 to its credit. (An American remake seems inevitable!) So if these old friends in South Korea had simply had a regularly scheduled movie night, they might have avoided a series of life-changing tragedies. Instead, they're about to have their real selves exposed in a single evening.

The big-hearted plastic surgeon (Cho Jin-woong) is involved in dicey business propositions; the brittle psychiatrist (Kim Ji-soo) is estranged from her teenage daughter; a bossy lawyer (Yoo Hae-Jin) is having a virtual "fling"; an amateur poet (Yum Jung-Ah) has a serious drinking problem. Et cetera, et cetera. Not everyone feels like a liar and a cheat. A sensible veterinarian (Song Ha-yoon), though the youngest, seems the most mature of the bunch while the one stag member at dinner, a quintessential drop-out (Yoon Kyung-ho) has been living a lie. Spoiler ahead: He's gay!

Winning attributes aside, none of them is particularly likable. Perhaps that's because they're way too real! A deflating ending in which we see what their lives would have been like if they had not accepted the far-from-innocent smartphone challenge undoes much of the power of what's preceded. Is screenwriter Bae Se-yeong telling us that we're better of not being honest with each other? I would have preferred he had pursued another question he introduced early in the movie. Are women more like iPhones and men more like Androids? As for me, I oft times feel like a Blackberry.

Baby and Me: Teen Pop

Life is complicated. Isn't that just the kind of overarching statement you'd expect from the mouth of a maturing teen. And hey, I won't argue against that sentiment either. But Kim Jin-yeong's Baby and Me is one of those comedies that first endorses the notion, then embellishes it to the point that you'll be protesting, Well, surely it's not as complicated as all that. A philandering teen (Jang Keun-suk) discovers he's a father. I can go there. His parents (Kim Byung-ok and Park Hyeon-suk) have deserted him because they're tired of him constantly getting into trouble. I can go there, too. The baby (Mun Mason) arrives in a basket (with a note) on the teen's doorstep so no one knows who the mother is. Less common but still plausible. A brainy neighbor girl (Song Ha-yoon) with over a half-dozen siblings herself becomes his surrogate co-parent. That's a bit less likely but okay. The real father (Ko Kyu-pil) turns out to be his chubby friend whose mother is dying of cancer. Hmm. Rather than allow a perfectly nice white couple raise the baby in America, the teen (who's no longer a daddy) races his motorcycle to the airport, maneuvers past all the security and guilt trips the new parents so that his sneaky friend -- to whom he's giving a bagful of money -- can raise the child in Korea. Now you're stretching it but you're also making a point. It's just so out of nowhere. All of this happens in three days. Now you're annoying me.

You're going, wait, wait. This is a comedy. Sure. I agree. Baby and Me doesn't have to be believable if it's funny. So how about the scene where he's tracking down breast milk from recent mothers? Or the low, gravelly old man voice that the baby uses to articulate desires. Or the preposterous chicken outfit the teen girl wears from time to time? That's funny for funny's sake, right? Lighten up. Well, I'd lighten up if it were funny. But it's generally not. Especially the examples you've just cited. And admittedly, it's me citing them and not you. And yes, I laughed a few times. I just didn't think it had to be so complicated. That's all. You get my drift? I guess so.