This movie looks gorgeous, with very interesting sets and absolutely stunning, fantastic costumes. Most of the acting is okay, particularly by Woo-seong Kam as the chief clown and Jin-yeong Jeong as the king; but Jun-ki Lee as the girl-like clown of the title is embarrassingly bad - a real ham who can simper and pose and wail and shed real-looking tears, but that's about all. What the king sees in him is beyond my imagining, but then the king is insane, so....The story is so ridiculously overwrought and melodramatic, though, that hammy acting almost fits better than good acting. This movie is fantastic to look at as long as you're able to ignore the two-hour soap opera that makes Dynasty seem like Shakespeare.

Trust South Korea to produce nice tragedies again and again. First it was "Friend", then "Joint Security Area", and now "The King and the Clown", which is about two male clowns being arrested for staging a comedy which mocks the King, and would be spared the death sentence if they could humor the King as much as they did to the civilians. This sounds a little like "Brokeback Mountain" taking place in Korea, but the speech and behavior the two clowns have towards each other is carefully crafted that they make it look more like a case of brotherhood amongst them. However, that does not in any way dilutes the affections we see between the two male friends, which are incredibly genuine. It is this genuine affection that makes this such a touching show to watch. Also, this is not just romance; this has elements of a thriller and social commentary interwoven within the plot. And all these roll out just nicely and rightly paced. No wonder it becomes one of the biggest selling movies in Korea, despite its modest production cost.

Overall it's an interesting story with good characters except the special but vague Gong-gil. The story goes smoothly up but doesn't make a neat and powerful ending. Perhaps the 4-hour edition is better? For people who want to get a historical oriental feel, the film is an eyeopener of course. But for Chinese like me, and many of my friends, the Korean culture shown in the film resembles Chinese culture in too many ways - only in a simpler and noisier form - that it fails to attract.There are also some laughable minor goof around. Korean characters were not likely be in official statements at that time, as the king then heavily suppressed them and used Chinese characters instead. And the Chinese characters on the fan in the hand of an official around the year 1500, read "Tianxia Wei Gong" from "Sun Wen", the famous revolutionist that overthrew Qing Dynasty in China in 1911.

This is an amazing film, it has everything in it, the visuals are beautiful, the soundtrack fits the film perfectly and the acting is amazing! i was so struck by this film and it was so emotionally charged it brought tears to my eyes. This film has no big name actors but it's appeal is it's simple universal storyline, the subtle yet powerful relationship between Gong-gil and Jaeng-sang. Even though this film has no big name actors in it, watch out for Lee jun ki who is amazing in this film he was partly the reason this film did so well, you will love him after watching this film ^^don't be scared off by the homosexual theme, there are no sex scenes and all the homosexuality is implied.all in all I CANNOT RECOMMEND THIS FILM ENOUGH!