Mercy and emptiness Although world cinema offers us millions of different stories for every taste, sometimes you just want to relax, recharge your optimism and dream. Comedies cope best with this task, but even they cause different smiles: kind, angry, sad, sarcastic, and only such a look as romcoms causes the desired - a dreamy smile. “I accidentally picked up love” is a typical romantic comedy that copes with the above task very well, and often when watching it you find yourself with a smile from ear to ear on your face, and sometimes with embarrassed paint on your cheeks, but invariably with a good mood. For this mood, you could forgive the series everything, even monstrous problems with drama, but – let’s be frank – “I accidentally picked up love” – is not a masterpiece.
The main theme of the series is love, and most likely “I accidentally picked up love” can be described as a collection of typical mimish moments that are almost forbidden way to make any girl’s heart tremble. But to call the series a full-fledged love story is impossible: “Love” is not a story of overcoming and struggle, and all that could be said and shown about the relationship of the main couple, said, at most, to the fifth series. It would seem that all the contradictions have been overcome, love yourself – I do not want to, only a typical Chinese drama should stretch for another 20 episodes, and there is nothing more to tell about our heroes. Here, apparently, the writers remembered that the main character is a successful and resourceful businessman, and, therefore, must be involved in corporate wars and intrigues. I don’t know what happened to the writers of the series next, but I suppose it was a brainstorming exercise to “give birth” a lot of ideas that could be implemented in the series. It is difficult to say what guided the main screenwriter, but it seems that he came to the decision that it is not good to lose, and included in the stalled “Love” in general everything that was invented, regardless of adequacy.
Only the above fantasy can somehow explain the huge problems with the script that haunted the series after the first episodes. "Love" can not decide on the main villain, can not choose the central storyline, each time starting another promising story, which, as a rule, ends with nothing either in the same series or, at most, in the next. Then on the screen the competition within one company, then the competition with another, then “chef, everything is lost” and the inevitable failure, then immediately success. There are too many events, they do not have time to be presented properly, the topics do not develop, and what else to expect if the business itself is very conditional here. The first series introduces the protagonist Lin Yue as a brilliant developer, and then for some reason he is engaged in e-commerce, which is a completely different field. His company is a successful business, then just a startup. What the competitors of the hero do is not completely clear. Starting somewhere from the 15th series, problems with dramaturgy are superimposed with editing problems: there are really important events in the series, and the hero, for example, declares that he is going to a conditional hospital, followed by a scene of peaceful discussion of the dinner. This creates a steady feeling that at least two-thirds of the events are cut out of the series, but then how does it even be perceived? In addition, “I accidentally picked up love” strikes in self-repeat, so that events of the same type and turns of the same kind occur with the characters more than once, although it is known that it is impossible to enter the same river twice.
The love of the two main characters looks quite romantic, but this does not solve the problem that An Xing and Ling Yue are not so much living people as types. On the screen is a typical Cinderella and a typical Prince Charming with all the ensuing. Attractive for the viewer of the characters is the fact that any girl and woman can associate themselves with the heroine, and the hero is an ideal man, whose love is so easy to dream of. The very love of these two is an absolute fairy tale, which in real life does not happen, since these people are too different, from different worlds, that you catch yourself thinking how much they do not fit each other. So, An Xing, being a perfect child, absolutely does not feel the moment, coming with his childishness to his absolutely adult beloved, who needs to solve a million problems immediately, and taking him to the attraction. The effect is aggravated by the fact that characters are shown in statics, and nothing can make them develop. However, the actors manage to play quite well, given that there is not much to play here. Oddly enough, the secondary lines are better here, and the authors tried to somehow tell the story and show all the characters in general, even such purely technical as the bodyguard of the main character. However, the general scenario problem manifested itself here: for example, promisingly introducing the beautiful and successful half-brother An Xing into the plot, contrasting him with Lin Yue, the series failed to properly show the confrontation, make intrigue on this, build a story around this plot. Another character, initially portrayed as comically negative, self-removes for almost the entire series, then suddenly manifests himself positively.
The final is something beyond that. Apparently, the goal was to shock the viewer as much as possible with an illogical “unexpected”, in connection with which the victim of advanced scenario thought falls a completely unsuitable hero for such a role, whose line, it seems, could not bring to such an end at all. It would be just unexpected, but justified, so no! The case when nothing foreshadowed, so, apparently, what to do, decided at the last minute, and the script was written “on the knee”.
I don’t think that “I accidentally picked up love” aspired to become something outstanding, and there are more problems than advantages, but there are also advantages. The series makes a stupidly happy smile from numerous hugs and kisses, bright colors lift the mood, and a good soundtrack contributes to the creation of the right atmosphere. It would be a good story, okay, some story, and it would be great. In the form in which “Love” is presented now, you can easily shoot at least 10, at least 110 episodes, nothing would change, but you could fit into 15.
Strangely, this is a clearly negative review, but I have no negative to the series. He is a distilled romance, such as life lacks, a dream and a fairy tale, and works very well in this field. But even this does not save from moments of boredom caused by the almost absent scenario, and from the bewilderment that this scenario sometimes causes.