Above the Clouds (2017)

Nice but Could have been better

There are good things, that make it nice to watch
-interesting plot
-plenty of new happenings, a good rythm, the story is always moving forwards and we never get bored
-characters who are interesting because they are neither entirely black or white and they all evolve (except one, but I’ll come to that later), especially the « villains » : their growth is very interesting to follow. They’re all very different and somehow relatable
- good casting
-i have a crush for the setting in the show business world : it’s super interesting to see how they work, what kind of new roles they would get

…But there are some less good things that make the drama not so good
-plenty of cliches, that include these annoying tropes we don’t want to see anymore : everyone bullied the female lead, she gets framed and saved, the male lead starts off as a jerk (he was reallyyyyyyyyyy annoying) but later comes as a nice guy and all, all of the girls of the drama who are after the female lead for some reason
-the female lead herself : the actress is not even so good, but that’s not the main problem, it’s the character. She’s incredibly naive, never really evolves, never has any character growth. Every time she gets bullied or framed, someone has to save her ass again and again. And yet, she always falls again in the trap and gets bullied again and again. She’s neither smart nor strong, or mature and she doesn’t change through the whole drama. You don’t get why everyone is so obsessed with her
-The repetitive plot : to see her get accused wrongly, to see her fight for no reason with the male lead, again and again… at some point, that was really annoying to see the same trope used over and over
-there are some plot situations that feels very frustrating. The biggest how everyone cornered her in the end to guilt her into giving her kidney (or something like that) to the kid :I hated how everyone was trying to force her, with different means, for different reasons. I get it, the parents and the public wanted her to save the kid. But whether she wanted to do so, to risk her own health to save the kid that her mom had after abandoning her, it was her business, no one had the right to tell her what she should or should not do. What I hated even more is how they were basically coercing her into doing this : no one thought of asking her nicely (except Zuo Zuo, who had started as a spoiled brat ; can’t believe she showed more sense than the others), no one considered she had the right to say no and no one thought of considering her feelings or comforting her (I mean, come on, she never received her mom’s care and suddenly, she had to help her mom’s other kid who had received it ; that’s harsh !) ; they just either confronted her on live tv, so that her whole career would be jeopardized if she said no, or told her « you must help him ». I can’t help but think this was way too arbitrary and unfair on her. The female lead often annoyed me and made me feel she deserved being bullied for being so stupid but this time was too much. I also disliked how those who had done this for other reasons than the kid’s health were not good responsible for this : basically, her biggest rival spread the word of what’s happening and her suitor because she can no longer stand that the male lead like. But this was something that often happened : whenever some people would do her wrong, they wouldn’t really (or at all) be punished, and that felt very frustrating.
This is only an example : there are plenty of situations that feel very frustrating because they don’t make sense, are unreasonable or unfair and make you just wanna throw your laptop through the air when watching (there’s also the fact that you don’t get why her mom had to be mean to her when seeing her again and pretend she didn’t acknowledge her, if not only she knew the female lead was her daughter and if it wasn’t because she feared her daughter would jeopardize her new family/status : just WHYYYYYYYYYYY !). We couldn’t help but feel like the screenwriters wanted to insert these tropes and not care if that made sense.

So, in short terms, it was nice to kill time… but it could have been much better, hadn’t they used such annoying cliches, tropes and hadn’t made the female lead such an annoying doormat

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