The Frog Prince

Thanx to Sister Choy's strong recommendation, I embarked on watching that supposedly phenonmenal Prince Turns Into A Frog (王子变青蛙) that took Taiwan by storm and won my Malay friend's heart by hynopsis (so I suspect) recently. As my friends would know, I'm pretty much anti-QJL, mainly because they have an (old) boy band that can't quite decide if they are a 4, 5 or 6 member group. And that's not all, the stars under the QJL stable are just not quite 'there'. I shan't go into elaboration on what I mean by that since the philosophy of karma keeps ringing in my head. Anyway, the biggest problem with QJL lies with their boss and his iron-fisted management combined with cock-eyed misjudgement.

Now, back to the Frog Prince. I really think that it's Taiwan's top rated drama by sheer stroke of luck. Storyline is cliched and said to have been uncannily similar to K-drama Save the Last Dance. Its saving grace is the generally good production, scripting and impressive supporting cast. The leads are just....well....lacking in overall image direction and plain dowdy in style though Qiao-en impresses with her natural acting. My 3 fave characters from the show turns out to be...

From left: Qiao-en (Tianyu), Tianyu's mama and Tianyu's didi

Tianyu's didi speaks with a farnie accent cos I think he's ABC but he's really quite cute and shows potential to blossom into a hottie! What disturbs me a little is the near-cock-eyeness of 2 actors from the drama:

1) Ming Dao (aka 动力火车's brudder) ~ ok, his is not so bad. But once the camera caught him in one of those 'intense gazes' scenes, I can't help noticing how close his 2 eyeballs move towards each other.

2) Whatever Qiao her name is lar (they seem to have many Qiaos in QJL) ~ Oh gosh! Either her eyeballs are damn big and that's why they always look like they are about to 'langa' each other, or she's got a lazy eye problem lor.

(Ignore Shaowei on the right please. He can't really act, not exactly good looking but is lucky to be above 180cm to merit him a place in 2 different (old) boy bands named after some numbers.)

By the way, the wardrobe of the cast sucks and I dun blame the actors. If the character played by Mike He in Why Why Love thinks Rainie Yang dresses like Ah-Soh, the wardrobe crew should really take some cues from QJL Production on how to look really 俗. Even the styling on Meteor Garden filmed 7 years back looks trendier than this Frog Prince drama done in 2005 lor.

Overall verdict: 3 stars - worth watching on Tudou but forget about buying the VCDs lar.

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p.s.: Intro to the Pipi Rating System

From now, I'll start rating shows according to this scale -

0 star: It's so bad, I feel ashamed for having watched a single second of it. (Example in this category: 炮制女朋友)

1 star: I only bother giving it 1 star to save myself the embarassment for having watched more than 5 seconds. (Example: 恋上你的床)

2 stars: Barely passed the grade. Watch it only if you have a soft spot for something or someone in the show.

3 stars: Watchable production but not worth your investment on the VCD / DVDs. I rather squint my eyes silly watching it on the small screen of YouTube.

4 stars: Eye-candies passed, production passed, entertainment value passed; what more can we ask from a near-perfect show?

5 stars: Oh-My-Freaking-Gawdly good show! So awesome you can watch and rewatch and rewatch...!