A Great Chinese Restaurant: Don't Expect a Sequel to Le Gran Chef

I don't know how I got it into my head that Kim Ui-seok's A Great Chinese Restaurant (which I'd initially seen referred to as The Great Chef: Peking Restaurant) was a sequel to Chong Yun-su's Le Gran Chef, one of the funniest Korean comedies I've ever seen. The title is similar but not truly derivative. The movie itself was actually made eight years earlier than the one I thought it followed. Be that as it may, I was pretty excited to see the imagined followup. What I saw instead was a truly endearing little indie picture about a failing Chinese restaurant that finds a second life shortly after its owner (the wonderful Shin Goo) has a stroke thereby forcing the staff to draw upon its own resources to drum up business again.

The flailing restaurant's recovery is largely due to the arrival of Yang Han-kook (Kim Seok-hun), the son of the owner's childhood friend, a friend who disappeared many years ago after borrowing a lot of money and a butcher knife. Yang wants to repay his father's debt -- not with money but with the discovery of an irresistibly tasting recipe for a spicy noodle dish. If he can do this, he'll fulfill his father's childhood pact with the owner to establish a little eatery that qualifies as the best Chinese restaurant in town. With gently naturalistic performances from quite a few actors early in their careers -- Jeong Jun as the klutzy prep cook, Myeong Se-bin as the owner's independent daughter, A Great Chinese Restaurant is, in reality, the perfect companion piece to Le Gran Chef, because it revisits the same themes -- the comedy of competition, the poignancy of familial devotion, even the cooperative nature of the kitchen -- on a smaller scale. This is a chamber movie for foodies, a sentimental dramedy about pursuing the impossible, a feel-good flick about male bonding and the importance of not taking shortcuts.

The only things that keep this film from being a mini-masterpiece are the grating soundtrack and the unappetizing closeups of the various dishes. This film won't make you crave Chinese food. Why should it? It's Korean!

Postman to Heaven: Mail-Order Bride, Heaven-Sent Groom

Lee Hyeong-min's Postman to Heaven apparently has two demographics in mind: 14-year-old girls and 47-year-old gay men. (You can guess which niche I fit into.) It's an irresistible saccharine romance that knows its audience will forgive anything, no matter how improbable, as long as quirky young ingenue Ha Na (Han Hyo-ju) and pop-star-turned-angel Jae-jun (Kim Jae-joong) end up together in matrimonial harmony.

How It Starts: Ha Na is in a funk. Her boyfriend just died and she's pissed because her grieving process has been interrupted by the revelation that her sweetheart was married and had a kid. It's funny the things you learn at a funeral. Bitter and bewildered, she dashes off an angry letter to the deceased which she then drops at the Mailbox to Heaven. (You know, that mailbox that's located in the middle of the field just outside the city.) There, she meets Jae-jun, God's postal carrier who confirms his celestial status with two white feathers attached to a necklace and another two fluttering on his keychain.

Where It Goes: He hires her to help on his postal route, which also entails concocting cockamamie schemes to trick people into thinking their lost loves forgive them. A rock singer gets a scrapbook from his dead dad thereby proving his father accepted his son's career choices. An old man (Shin Goo) gets DNA results that confirm that his late wife never cheated so his one son really is his offspring. An amateur photographer gets an audiotaped that proves his son doesn't mind that he's partly to blame for his mother's death. And so on and so on. Along the way, the two adorable ones fall in love but then discover that he's basically invisible. This is what's known as a deal breaker in my book but here it's more of a temporary setback. (This is fantasy, not neo-realism, in case you haven't figured that out.)

How It Ends: Everything works out! While not giving away all the details, I will say that I was surprised when he ended up wearing nerdy glasses and she ended up with a much simpler haircut. But you can see why they deserve each other. She overacts; he underacts. She needs to get a life; he needs to get back his life. She wants to design postcards. He wants to deliver them. If you don't believe that last part, just stick around for the credits.