Too Beautiful to Lie
Too Beautiful to Lie
| 20 February 2004 (USA)
Too Beautiful to Lie Trailers

A professional lady con makes herself the pharmacist's fiancée overnight, and faces a disastrous blemish in her impeccable con-woman career.

Reviews
karluk99

Kim Ha-Neul plays Yeong-ju, a convicted criminal who has just won parole by using her acting skills to make the parole board feel sorry for her. Through a chain of coincidences involving a stolen engagement ring, she ends up in a small town pretending to be the pregnant girlfriend of a man she sat next to on the train. It's a great idea for a romantic comedy that may very well work for some viewers.But a great comedy needs to actually deliver laughs, and I found that the laughs were few and far between. As for romance, it was difficult to figure out why the two lead characters fell in love. They don't seem to enjoy each other's company very much. A few more scenes showing them drawing closer together would have made it easier to root for a happy ending.Yeong-ju's character was unconvincing as an ex-con. Sure she prides herself on being able to mislead people by spinning convincing lies, but otherwise she's as high-minded and moral as any woman you'll ever meet. It would never occur to her to steal money just because it's there for the taking.I was surprised to discover that Kim Ha-Neul won an acting award for her role as Yeong-ju. She spends too much time mugging for the camera for my taste. Her performance in Almost Love was definitely better than here. But I won't quibble. She's a talented actress who deserves multiple awards. It took a strong performance from her to make Too Beautiful to Lie worth watching at all.Overall verdict: Too Beautiful to Lie has its moments, but overall there are better Korean romantic comedies to watch.

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Desertman84

Too Beautiful To Lie features Kim Ha-Neul, Kang Dong-Won and Song Jae- Ho. It is a romantic, melodrama comedy about a beautiful ex-con and an innocent and naive village boy.It was directed by Bae Hyeong-jun."Yeong-ju" is a cute, innocent looking girl with an excellent deception skills who is imprisoned for fraud. But using her talent she managed to go through the evaluation and able to receive a parole for her only sister's wedding. She boards a train with wooden crafted geese which she handcrafted as for her sister's wedding gift. But during the journey she is confronted by an innocent village boy "Hui-cheol". He is also on his way to propose his love to his girlfriend with his deceased mother's family heirloom ring. New problems begin when Yeong-ju witnessing pickpocket man stealing the ring from Hui-cheol. Driven mad by her own safety she stole the ring back, to make everything back to normal. But unfortunately for her, she is unable to board the train on time thus missing it and leaving her wedding gift bag on the train.Determined to find her bag, she tracks down Hui-cheol and reaches his village looking for him. Making things more complicated everybody misunderstood her and welcomed her as their daughter-in-law due to the ring. Unwilling to tell them the truth due to her own safety and get time to resumption of her bag she manages to fool everyone around the family and manipulate Hui-cheol as father of her unborn child. Meanwhile, Hui-cheol who didn't have the ring to make the marriage proposal comes back empty with a heavy heart, and is enraged when he finds the plot that has been going on while he was away. But worsening his situation, no one actually believes him, thinking he had abandoned his poor fiancée, and ended up kicked him out of the house making his life more miserable.This is a standard made-to-order romantic comedy from the Korean Cinema that is both cheesy and formulaic despite the good performance of Kim Ha-Neul, who's effective as a wacky romantic comedy lead.Practically,it offers nothing new to the genre.

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henry325

A very well thought out story that lacks some depth, but the point of the movie is to entertain and not provoke thought. Kim Ha-Neul IS the movie, her facial expressions and acting within the confines of the situations provided is pretty much the whole movie. She is sassy, mean, but also classy and very cute. I recommend My tutor friend and of course My Sassy girl if you like this movie. They are romantic comedies with a slight touch of drama. It gets kind of cheesy at times. The jokes are good and the portrayal of the countryside family is great. 8/10 just because I know there are better movies of the same type and with the same kind of characters. If you like Kim Ha-Neul you would probably also like Jeon Ji-Hyun movies.

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Mister Buggz

First let me start by saying that two comments for this movie are far too less. This movie deserves more recognition. I'm lucky to have seen it.There are comparisons to make between this movie and My sassy girl. A movie that was even better than this one. An other reviewer also mentioned My tutor friend. I also have that movie (but still have to see it) and i'm sure it's a great movie too because Korean romantic comedy's are really good. A great difference with American romantic comedy's is that in Korean films the two leading persons create such a great atmosphere. It even isn't necessary for the person in love to kiss to see that they are in love. What rarely happens in Korean romantic comedy's.

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