Plerng Chimplee (2014)

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT BUT IT GETS MESSY

Overview:
Before going into this drama, I had very high expectations since Aum and Bella is one of my favorite Thai actors and actresses. It took me seven years to finally get to this drama, but here are my thoughts and opinions about this drama!
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Story: 6.5/10
As the synopsis stated, the story revolves around a rich man name Naantrai who fell in love at first sight with a beautiful village dancer name Nueanang. Naatrai pretends to be a middle-class manager who manages the village. Because Nueanang's mother died from a broken heart after being left behind by Nueanang's father who was a foreigner, Nueanang's grandfather refuses Nueanang to fall in love with Naatrai who is a city boy. Not only that, Naantrai's overbearing mother does not approve of a low-status woman such as Nueanang as her daughter-in-law and prefers the rich Kaekai. Through all these adversities, will Nueanang and Naantrai's love be strong enough to face all these trials?

Personally, I was somewhat turned off by the idea of love at first sight since the way they portrayed it in the story was a bit more on the lusting side. However, as Naantrai starts to know Nueanang more, he falls in love even harder. It was pretty sweet up until episode 7 when $#!+ starts to go down and the genre just turns 360. It becomes more mysterious and hateful. I mean, Naatrai's mother and "fiance" were already hateful enough but I guess the scriptwriter thought that wasn't enough. I would give the first half of this drama a solid 8 and a 5 on the second half. The beginning was so well-developed but the climax and conclusion had so many plot holes and didn't live up to my expectations. It was a decent ending but could've been worked on a bit better.
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Acting/Casting: 8.5/10
My, my, my is Aum just HOT! Aum as Naantrai is 100% believable. The way he expressed his emotions made me weak. Of all of Aum's works, the most notable scenes are his "I'm angry at you" scenes, "I'm sorry, I was wrong" scenes, and "I love you with all my heart" scenes. This drama no doubt had all of these scenes. It was nice to see how his acting style was pretty consistent even compared to his older works. On the other hand, Naantrai's character was a bit overbearing. Yes, he can be sweet and understanding, but no man can be perfect. Naantrai also has a bad temper and tends to make rash decisions and quick assumptions. [SPOILER] Personally, no matter how much I love Naantrai, I wouldn't have forgiven him that easily just because I love him. If he wasn't able to trust and listen and figured things out instead of being angry and jealous, I would've liked him way better.

Then there is Bella who plays Nueanang. Like most of Bella's drama, Neanang is a beautiful young lady whose beauty captivates men from far and near. But what shines even brighter is her beauty inside. And due to that, there tend to be jealous characters (which this drama provides 4 of them for entertainment ;D). Even though Nueanang is physically weak, she's mentally very strong. She knows what her morals are and sticks to it even to the very end. Although this is a very typical Bella role, she did pretty well.

And then there are other notable characters like Khamfai (best friend of Nueanang), Saengkum (second male lead), Daoden (second female lead), Aunt Wandi (servant of Naantrai's household), Tun (Naantrai's brother), and Mae Nai (Naantrai's mother). I've seen many of these actors here and there from other dramas and they always add spice and entertainment no matter what their roles are. It's the same with this drama, they had so many background characters that really added to the plotline.

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Music: 8/10
I found this drama after my sister sent me the OST to this drama and the singer's voice is so sweeeeet.

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Rewatch Value: 6.5/10
I would rewatch this occasionally, but it wouldn't be my go-to drama. I could definitely do without watching the second half of the series.
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Overall: 7.5/10
Overall, I'm giving this drama a generous 7.5/10. At first, I was going to settle for a 6 but felt generous enough to rate it higher because of the acting/casting. The main downfall of this drama has to be the loopholes. Although the scriptwriters did try to fill the loopholes in, it still didn't make perfect sense. Plus, the forcefully and non-consentsual scenes were a big turn-off. It was just kind of a "huh?" moment for me why the scriptwriter felt like they needed to add that, but again, this is a 2014 drama. Is it suppose to be romantic? Is it suppose to make you mad? Like, what's the purpose of those scenes? But overlooking all of that, character development was decent. There was a lot of unnecessary anger and vengeance, but what do you expect from a Thai drama? The most redeeming quality would be the chemistry between the main leads. I would've liked it if there were more screen time for the second main lead's stories to develop better, but this was a 15 episode drama so it was super rushed. All in all, casting and acting redeemed this drama. The storyline and characters were typical, nothing new here for the Thai industry. I would classify this as a filler drama, but if you LOVED this drama, good for you! Some other dramas I would recommend for you would be Hua Jia Sila, Jam Loey Rak, Badarn Jai, and Jai Rao (2008). Lots of anger and vengeance but are good typical entertaining dramas.

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