LEE JUN-JAE IS TOO BIG TO LOVE?
Nice To Not Meet You
Starring: Lee Jung-jae, Lim Ji-yeon, Kim Ji-hoon, Seo Ji-hye, Choi Gwi-hwa, Jeon Sung-woo, Oh Yeon-seo, Kim Hyun-jin, Na Young-hee, Jin Ho-eun, Kim Jae-chul, Jeon Soo-kyeong
Episodes: 16
Rating: 📺📺📺
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video
The Plot:
Lim Hyeon-jun (Lee-Jung-jae), a former small-time actor, finds fame again after having been discovered and cast as an action hero on TV. However, his professional – and subsequently his personal life – is upended with the arrival of reluctant entertainment reporter Wi Jeong-sin (Lim Ji-yeon), a former war correspondent working secretly to expose a slush fund case involving a corrupted corporation CEO.
The Performances:
While we all love Lee Jung-jae as Player #456 Seong Gi-hun in Netflix’s Squid Game I, II and III, he is passable here as Hyeon-jun. A veteran actor who’s more comfortable in the action genre, Lee makes an awkward romantic lead in this romcom. When it comes to making a love confession – not a spoiler but a staple of all romcoms in k-dramaland – Lee’s version should go down in the annals as the most uninspiring. Not surprisingly, the earth doesn’t move for Jeong-sin, his counterpart character, played Lim Ji-yeon who, while memorable as mean girl Park Yeon-jin in Netflix’s The Glory, is unusually stoic here. Both actors seem to be keeping their distance, lending their on-screen relationship more akin to kinship than skinship.
The Package:Â
Make no mistake, Nice To Not Meet You is art imitating life for Lee Jung-jae. Like his character Hyeon-jun who’s being typecast as an action hero, Lee wants a breakout role in a romcom/melodrama and this is his vehicle. But rather than making himself swoon-worthy and sets hearts a-flutter (here’s looking at Jang Ki-yong of Netflix’s Dynamite Kiss), Lee has decided to keep his larger-than-life dignified persona throughout, and just wouldn’t do some things to seal the deal with his love interest. Nice To Not Meet You would have been a better drama has it not been just a Lee Jung-jae vehicle. As it is, everything else – a good plot and relatively engaging performances of its co-stars – gets thrown under the bus.