[K-Movie Night] Ditto: A Timeless Love Story Made in South Korea

Welcome to K-Movie Night — a once-a-month feature where we microwave some popcorn, put on a face mask, and get cozy with a Korean movie from yesteryear. With so many films finally streaming (with subs!), now is the time to get caught up on all those movies we missed featuring our favorite drama actors.

Each month, we’ll pick a flick, write a review, and meet you back here to discuss whether or not it’s worth a watch. Super simple. All you have to do is kick up your feet and join us in the comments!

 
MOVIE REVIEW

My two favorite dramas of 2024 so far have been Lovely Runner and Marry My Husband — which is why it only made sense to put at least two of the pretty faces from those heart-fluttery dramas back on our screens again ASAP. With Kim Hye-yoon and Na In-woo front and center in this month’s pick, it seems like a win-win. Add to that another of my low-key faves, Bae In-hyuk (in glasses!), and I was sold from the start.

Ditto is a 2024 remake of a fantasy romance film that — back in 2000 — eclipsed Il Mare at the box office when both movies premiered. Each film circles around a time-bending love story, but doesn’t quite hit the time-travel mark. Though I haven’t seen the original, the updated version — a high-concept campus romance with a cute cast — might be just what we need to ease us off the heartbreak of losing Lovely Runner this week.

Ditto turns out to be a somewhat simplistic story about following your dreams. It just happens to use a ham radio that can cross time as a device to get there. We start in the spring of 1999, when a mechanical engineering student only a year shy of graduation is harboring dreams of dropping out of college. We learn later that he really wants to be a writer, but that’s not a job that pays the bills.

The student is KIM YONG (Yeo Jin-gu), who’s about to be shaken up by the new freshman SEO HAN-SOL (Kim Hye-yoon). One of only a few girls in the major, Han-sol harbors her own dream: to be an accomplished mechanical engineer someday. When the two meet, it’s love at first sight, in a series of short sequences that unfortunately pass by far too fast to muster any real chemistry. Yong is inspired by how passionately Han-sol talks about her goals, and she seems to just like him back (for some reason?).

The ham radio comes into play when Yong picks up the frequency of a fellow student who’s looking for a stranger to interview for one of her classes. He agrees to meet her on campus the next day in front of the student union building, but at the scheduled time and place, she doesn’t show up.

We then cut to KIM MU-NEE (Jo Yi-hyun) waiting in front of the same building where we’ve just seen Yong, except it’s older and more run down now — and she’s standing in the pouring rain, when Yong was just in the sun. Also, she has a smartphone, so we know straight away it’s not 1999 anymore. Suddenly, she’s covered with an umbrella, and we meet OH YOUNG-JI (Na In-woo) — her “close friend” who she’s had a long-time crush on.

With this setup, I was expecting lots of romance, with building tensions between the respective lead couples. Instead, the story focuses on the friendship that develops between Yong and Mu-nee, as the two connect and communicate over their radios every night. As we can guess, Mu-nee is in 2024, and the two students have somehow crossed time to call each other. Although, neither of them believes it until much later in the movie.

Still, as they go about trying to meet — and then trying to solve why they’re never able to meet — they start to discuss their love troubles. Yong wants to ask Han-sol to be his girlfriend and Mu-nee, though she’s slow to admit it, wants to stop hiding her feelings from Young-ji. But the advice is mostly one-sided as Mu-nee tells Yong how to primp himself, where to take a date, and when to confess his feelings. “Love is all about timing,” she says. “You should follow your heart.”

But the message of timing takes on a larger life when the two new confidants realize they know some of the same people. Mu-nee’s dad is none other than Yong’s best friend, KIM EUN-SUNG (Bae In-hyuk) — and a mystery starts to develop. Giving away the twist would spoil the fun, but a question arises about just how much this time-crossed pair is affecting each other’s lives.

The movie’s messages to follow your heart and follow your dreams get a little muddled in the ensuing time paradox, though, with each lead seeming to take home a different message. Also, the complex problems of the story’s logic are highlighted (in a bad way) by the simplicity of its resolutions, throwing the whole thing off balance.

In the end, a movie that’s supposed to be about romance makes it feel mostly tacked on. I was especially disappointed with the present-day timeline, because the dynamic between Mu-nee and Young-ji is very sweet but hardly there. In the past, things don’t go at all as expected, but even the tragic bent seems underdeveloped.

Overall, this is a simple movie with simple motives that doesn’t expect much from the viewer, and could even pass for a long Drama Special. The script feels a little flimsy and the characters are undercooked (I mean, when even Kim Hye-yoon’s character comes across as unenergetic, that’s saying a lot), and it definitely seems geared toward younger audiences.

The throwbacks to the 90s are done with detail — from payphones to Dance Dance Revolution — but with so many movies and dramas set in the 90s in the past few years done well (shoutout to Twinkling Watermelon), it’s hard to keep finding nostalgic novelty in old school computers and flip phones. While the general vibe here is very much like 20th Century Girl, it doesn’t have that film’s heart or energy either.

Still, the brief moments with Na In-woo on the screen perked me right up. And the burgeoning friendship between the leads as they discussed their crushes had the verve of young people just discovering love (who couldn’t use more of that?). So, if you’re looking for a prettily tied story that doesn’t require much attention, this might be one to throw on. Just know it ends a little too neat, without making total sense.

Join us in June for the next K-Movie Night and let’s make a party of it! We’ll be watching Start-up (2019) and posting the review during the last week of the month.

Want to participate in the comments when it posts? You’ve got 3 weeks to watch! Rather wait for the review before you decide to stream it? We’ve got you covered.