Dancing Queen is a South Korean comedy/melodrama/romance that revolves around a middle aged married couple chasing their past individual dreams while trying not to drift apart from one another.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Here's your story: Boy meets girl, they grow up, fall in love, get married, and have kids. Then, flash forward to their mid life doldrums. This all literally happens in a span of 10 minutes of movie run time.
Hubby and wife each now go through their daily routines, and though they love each other, they each long to recapture their youth and past glory before "being married with kids" got in the way. They each maintain their secret & separate lives as well; not in an unfaithful marital way, but she still loves to sing and dance it up with her old party friends, and he likes to hang out with his old drinking buds and talk about guy stuff.
Life for the married couple is going "OK enough", but it's somewhat unfulfilling for the both of them. His once promising and ambitious career path is now little more than an unprofitable civil rights law practice that is going nowhere, and she is simply tired of being a homemaker. Soon enough though, they are each presented an opportunity to realize their past dreams, and they each take full advantage to seize them. He starts off on a budding & whirlwind political career that soon has him running for mayor of the biggest city in the country. She secretly tries out for a Korean idol song/dance competition, and inadvertently ends up being the front woman for an older K-Pop girl/woman idol group.
Soon enough, hubby finds out what wife is doing and it causes considerable embarrassment to his political career. Each wants the other to support their newfound success, but neither will budge, and they're soon in a stalemate that appears to be the final straw in a relationship headed for divorce. Follow along from there to see if the couple will call it quits, or perhaps find common ground and fall in love again.
It's a pretty straight forward plot, but it works pretty well overall; primarily because it's fairly well written and directed throughout, and it is pretty charming. But the two leads elevate this film beyond what it would have been otherwise. The male lead is played by Hwang Jung-min; he's been in a ton of stuff over the years, and he's a very polished and diverse actor. He really excels at playing the "everyman" regardless of what his role is, and he just gets more and more charismatic with each passing year. The lead actress is played by Eom Jeong-hwa; she actually used to be a very popular early K-Pop star, but gave that career up as she got older to concentrate on acting. I've seen her in a several films over the years and she's always been solid, and this is a role she is perfectly suited for based on her background.
The rest of the cast is rounded out by a bunch of secondary characters that are all very effective in their limited in roles; wife's parents, girl band members, politicians, talent scout, husband's former clients, and the adorable young daughter of the two leads (who practically steals the entire movie with her sarcastic wit and personality, and she perfectly reflects what you would expect as the offspring of the two leads).
The film is approx 2 hours in length, but it zips along at a nice clip for the bulk of its run time, and there are only a few scenes that break the momentum. It's often highly amusing throughout, until we get to the eventual big finish where everything is resolved one way or another. And, when all is said and done, you're left with a light hearted & silver tongued middle aged rom-com with a sappy melodramatic ending.
Bottom line: I really liked it, and I'll give it 7 out of 10 stars. It's certainly not great or ground breaking in any way, but I did enjoy it for the most part, and don't regret watching it. My GF (who is Korean and in the target age group) could not stop laughing throughout, until she started crying uncontrollably when the screws were turned. I wrote this whole review and she's still going through the tissues. Uh Oh; she's giving me the "evil eye". Gotta Go!
