My Sassy Girl Lost in Hollywood's Translation
By wchung | 22 Feb, 2025

Sometimes you've just gotta keep things in their original form!

There’s an idea that some of us subconsciously subscribe to that goes a little something like this: the rest of the world might have something mildly interesting going on here or there but the West is the center of the world and anything Westernized is automatically better. This is true in cuisine, literature, education and of course, cinema. Everyone knows American cinema is the best hands down, right? I mean, if you put the best-looking actors with the best directors and screenwriters, you’re almost guaranteed international success! Right?

I’m not so sure. I recently watched the Americanized (more like butchered) version of the Korean film My Sassy Girl. I tried to give it a fair chance, but a movie as good as the Korean version of My Sassy Girl doesn’t deserve the treatment the American version got. So what did they botch, exactly? Maybe the question should be what did they actually get right?

Well, for one, the general feel of the movie was just slightly off. Sure, you had a super nice guy protagonist and a sassy girl throwing the neatly-wrapped life of his into a firestorm. At least they got the main plot right but from the get-go, the general feeling of the story felt too fantastic and out there. One of the main reasons My Sassy Girl (Korean) is such a success is that it seems like a real story. It was purposefully designed to be like that because the story actually was birthed from a blog created by the main protagonist to cope with the issues that arose with his personal interactions with his sassy girl and from that blog he eventually wrote a screenplay and turned it in to the movie studio that produced the film.

From the get-go, the American version was immersed in fantasy. His parents were straight from Pleasantville, goofy, simple grins plastered across their faces. The screen transitions involved random fast-forwards that moved the story line along at a brisk clip but did little in terms of explanation. I wouldn’t have been surprised if all of a sudden the whole movie turned into animation, Roger Rabbit style.

Another bone I have to pick with the movie is that there was little in terms of creativity that the writers used to translate the movie to ‘American’. A lot of the situations that were so hilarious in the original seemed like a mockery in this version. One example would be that they had the main characters do kendo. In New York City. With no backstory. They practiced kendo as naturally as they would have gone ice skating at Rockefeller center. It’s just something New Yorkers do on dates, I guess. I’ve been away from the city for far too long.

Secondly, the scene with the AWOL soldier in the off-hours amusement park. It didn’t work so well in this version. First of all, it wasn’t off-hours in this version and the amusement park was completely empty. Not likely to happen in New York. Second of all, why is an armed AWOL soldier still in his fatigues in the middle of said amusement park in the middle of New York City? In the Korean version, this is a much more likely scenario because of their proximity to the Korean Demilitarized Zone.

It also doesn’t help the movie’s cause that a woman as sassy as she is can still keep her man around without having to satisfy him sexually. The amount of emotional, physical and verbal abuse wouldn’t be tolerated at all in America. So as the movie progresses, you generally feel for the guy but not really because he’s the one prolonging his own abusive relationship and sort of question why they’re even together. All in all, some things are just better off in their original flavor and context.