Husbands in Action: Bubbly, Bumbling-Buddy Comedy

Husbands in Action is straight up goofy. I say that appreciatively. For Park Gyu-tae's kooky bromantic comedy gradually ingratiates itself to the viewer by never letting its silliness falter. Ex-husband Hwang Choong-sik (Jin Seon-kyu) is the kind of supercop who uses his handcuffs like numchucks and will frame his frenemy for his farts; new husband Lee Min-seok (Gong Myoung) is a veterinarian who drives a van decked out with ears and a tail and can crack walnuts with his barehands; drug-dealing husband Ma Do-joon (Kim Ji Suk) is a dimwit with a strong inner dog and courts his brilliant scientist-wife (Lee Da-hee) by pummeling others. All three men must unite in order to save their loved ones from Kim Yong-gang (Yoon Kyung-ho), a behind-the-times ex-con who wants to get his turf back now that he's been released from jail.

The film abounds with silly details: a reporter (Jeon So Min) whose motives are more romantic than investigative; a police chief (Lee Soon-won) whose got a crush on his star detective. Well-executed character parts like one criminal second banana (Lee Hyun Kul) and Yong-gang's flashy wife (Lee Yoon-a) keep the laughs coming as does a delightfully absurd sequence in which the three main women defend themselves from a gang of attackers by using frozen fish as hammer-like weapons. A true knockout. Just the latest winner from Park who also wrote the touching A Great Chinese Restaurant.

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.