Korean Movie

Dream High took that concept, set it in an arts high school, and populated it with passionate, driven youngsters with stars in their eyes and dreams in their hearts — then upped the ante multiple times over by continually fiddling with the circumstances so that the underdog-victor dynamic was always in flux. While you may have been constantly rooting for the underdog, at any given moment that underdog might be any one of six characters.
It was a clever way to keep things evolving, ensuring that the relationships were always in development rather than sticking to a static good-evil dichotomy. The show trusted its viewership to follow the characters — even when they were dropping flowerpots on each other’s heads or calling each other third-rate. Thus it gave everyone more depth than you might expect of a fluff teen drama, as a result making it more than a fluff teen drama.
Casting is always tricky when you’re using more than one rubric of measurement. The need to balance the acting with the musical performance aspect led to a cast that was skewed more in favor of performance than I’d have liked, but there was enough solid acting to carry the show. Kim Soo Hyun became the heart of the drama with his shining sincerity, but you also had idols like Eunjung turning in solid portrayals of complicated personalities. True, not everyone was up to par, but the drama turned around those weaknesses on itself and incorporated them into the story, giving us meta-funny bits like Suzy’s hilarious Hye Mi Bot.
This drama was a case where the whole became more than a sum of its parts. While flaws could be spotted in a number of performances, together the kids had wonderful, heart-tugging chemistry. It was like feel-good magic. Who can forget Sam Dong proclaiming that Jin Gook’s underwear was shared property? Or Hye Mi figuring out how to get over her ego and learning what it meant to be a friend? Or Sam Dong crying desperately to Hye Mi to save him? Or the misfit mafia practicing dance moves in a jjimjilbang, under a hilariously eccentric Park Jin Young? The drama was full of rich development between these kids who went from being rivals to friends to emotional lifelines for each other.
Here’s where "Dream High" got it right — in the heartspace — because regardless of the flash and glitz of the musical numbers, or the big names of the producers, or the cameos by kpop stars, it didn’t use gimmicks as a crutch for content. The story, at its core, pulsed with real heart. For example, consider the show’s tackling of some touchy subjects, like the plotline involving a trainee being sexually assaulted by an agency president, who was subsequently vilified by the public as “asking for it.” The drama didn’t stop at mere mention of the issue, but used it as a launching pad for real emotional consequences as Baek Hee’s friends rallied around her and her teacher turned into a fierce mother hen in a way that still brings tears to my eyes. Speaking of whom, the teachers also displayed particular depth (and who could forget scene-stealing JYP, hilariously eccentric in his acting debut?). I love that we got misguided adults owning up to their mistakes, with Lee Yoon Ji fighting to reclaim her protégé’s integrity, whose loss she had facilitated in the first place.

Thanks to the success of "Dream High," we’ve got the upcoming "Dream High 2" to look forward to, which premieres a year after its predecessor. If it likewise proves successful, we may be looking at a lot of Dream-filled Januarys to come.