Let's just cut right to it, this show was painfully boring. There, I said it. A story built around partial amnesia has real potential, but between the choppy scene structure and random flashbacks thrown in constantly, the whole plot ends up feeling more tangled than it needed to be. The romance doesn't fare much better either, it's written so poorly that I never really found myself invested in this couple. Both leads come across stiff on screen and deliver their lines in a really awkward way. The show runs 8 episodes, each somewhere around 30 to 35 minutes. Hanuel, a 29 year old language teacher, wakes up after an accident only to realize his memory stops at age 19. It turns out he'd been in another accident back then too, which is why his memories cut off at that point. He has zero recollection of the fact that he's currently living with his childhood friend Saebyeok, who's now a huge celebrity. That makes the whole situation even harder for Hanuel to wrap his ...
The plot's pretty straightforward. Connie and Carla have been best friends since they were kids, and now they're struggling singers and performers trying to make it, even though their boyfriends don't seem too thrilled about their dreams. Everything changes when they witness their club boss getting murdered and have to run for their lives. They end up choosing LA as their escape since it's far enough away that the criminals won't be able to track them down. Once they settle in, they stumble into a drag club completely by accident and find out auditions are happening soon for new performers. Seeing their shot, they try out, get picked, and turn out to be such a hit that the club, which had been pretty lifeless before, suddenly starts pulling in more customers, and the two of them slowly become the talk of the place. Meanwhile the criminals are still out there hunting for them. There are some smaller side stories woven in involving other gay men and drag performers at the club, but the main one centers on the gay bartender, who also performs in drag, and his estranged brother, played by David Duchovny. A good chunk of the movie is spent on the two of them reconnecting after years of being apart, and those scenes bounce between awkward, tender, funny, and genuinely heartbreaking. There's also a romantic thread between Connie and the straight brother. And true to form, the ending manages to be both hilarious and touching, with the girls getting the bad guys arrested while also opening up and telling their truth in front of a full audience.
Let's just get the obvious criticism out of the way first. I get that plenty of people are going to have issues with this movie, two cisgender women pretending to be drag queens and somehow outperforming actual drag queens, a straight cis guy literally throwing up because he thinks he kissed a queer man, gender and queerness getting treated in a pretty surface level way, all of that. But honestly, sometimes you just need to relax a bit with these things. When I sit down for a movie like this, I'm watching for fun, laughs, and entertainment, and that's exactly what I got out of it. Anyone who's got a sense of humor and appreciates camp is probably going to have a blast with this one. I also ended up really enjoying the music and dance numbers, which doesn't always happen for me. The performances land with a lot of wit and energy, and there's even some moments of real, honest emotion in there. The makeup and wigs go completely over the top, but that's exactly what you'd expect going in. The film's biggest strength honestly comes from its campy musical numbers, which hilariously mock the whole guilty pleasure world of musical theater, building all the way up to a showstopping cameo from Connie and Carla's idol, Debbie Reynolds. Watch it if you just want to have a good time. (6/10)
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