The South Korean comedy ‘Spy Girl’ was a cute, engaging, mildly amusing if inconsequential film that did manage to grab a laugh here and there, but seemed to be mainly a showcase for its rather fetching star Jeong-Hwa Kim.

Go Bong (Yu Kong) is a very goofy, awkward young man who is a bit of a screw up.  Now I’m a little confused here, and it is probably a cultural thing, but Go Bong has failed a few times to get into what I think is college, but he does go to class every day to what I thought was college.  It’s not high school, because his former high school buddies call him up all the time to give a hard time about being the way that he is, but maybe he’s like in the Korean version of Junior College or something.  I don’t know.  Anyway, these former friends call Go Bong to hang out, but he’s got to bring a girl.  Go is too inept to find his own girl, and the girl his friends hooked him up with couldn’t make it so Go was stuck at the party with no date, being ridiculed, and drinking himself into a stupor.  While walking home and puking, some street thugs decide to rough the punk up, but he’s saved by a mysterious woman in yellow raincoat who gives these toughs the Kung Fu business.

Who is this mysterious woman?  Well, we don’t know her real name, but she assumes the name Ho Jin Park (Kim), a spy who has been sent by communist North Korea and takes a job at the local Burger King as a cover in order to track down and bring back a rouge spy who has run off with a bunch of the countries loot.  Well those wacky proliferating North Koreans should have sent a less attractive spy because this stunning young woman proceeds to become the object of affection of every man in the country, becomes the face of Burger King, shows up in newspapers and even shoots a television commercial.  She also becomes the obsession of Go Bong who by hook or

crook is going to make this lethal angel his woman, and by golly is he persistent.  So persistent in fact, that if dude were on this side of the pacific, I don’t think anyone would balk and giving my man a restraining order of some kind.  Anyway, Go Bong being the directionless loser that he is, gets a note for his required two years of army service and Ho Jin is being called back home as she is drawing way too much attention to herself, and love is looking to be in danger.  But then again, maybe not.

‘Spy Girl’ had a quite few amusing touches to it.  The older couple that who served as Ho Jin’s contacts were very amusing as they have become completely assimilated into South Korean culture, complete with bratty kids.  Listening to them remembering the good old spy days and the creative ways they used to kill people was pretty funny.  Dark, but funny.  There were a lot of nice little creative touches that director Han-Chun Park used, such as the various fantasies each young man has of Ho Jin’s amazing beauty, the flair he used for the few fight scenes he had in the film and sweet way he handled the love story elements near the end of the picture.

Thing is though, what exactly did Ho Jin see in this dude in the first place.  Believe me when I tell you simply harassing a beautiful girl constantly usually doesn’t result in a love match.  I’ve tried it.  A couple of times.  And for most of the film, Ho Jin seems genuinely irritated by Go Bongs affections, and the two actors really had no real chemistry together.

‘Spy Girl’ also wasn’t all THAT funny.  It was amusing, and it did have its moments, but it really wasn’t a laugh out loud comedy.  Nor did it have enough romance in it to be a love story.  Again, it had its moments, but just a few.  The main thing that ‘Spy Girl’ excelled at was photographing its very pretty star.  Not that photographing Jeong-Hwa Kim in a way to make her good looking is a challenge of any kind, but her flawless face is certainly the unmitigated star of this film.  That’s not altogether a bad thing because though woman is certainly pretty, she is also an engaging and charming actress and she carries the film well on her soft shoulders.

‘Spy Girl’ isn’t the best movie that I’ve seen coming out of Korea recently, but it did manage to amuse and entertain.  It may have a lacked a certain focus in its narrative, but did fall back well on the one thing it knew for certain it had going for it, and that was Jeong-Hwa Kim, and like I said before, that’s not altogether a bad thing at all.