Big is a romantic comedy about an 18 year old high school student (Shin Won Ho) who gets transported into the body of a 30 year old doctor (Gong Yoo) who is engaged to a teacher (Lee Min Jung) at his school which causes all sorts of complications for everyone involved.
Lee Min Jung plays Gil Da Ran who is a high school teacher. She is engaged to a doctor who she is very in love with. Things get complicated though after he is in an accident, and a student ends up trapped in his body.
Gong Yoo is Seo Yoon Jae who is a doctor and engaged to Da Ran. There’s a little mystery surrounding him, and an accident keeps that going after his body is inhabited by a student.
Next, we have Shin Who Ho as Kang Kyung Joon who is a high school student. He is also involved in the accident and takes over Yoon Jae’s body. His growing feelings for Da Ran leads to a lot of confusion for her.
Finally, Suzy is Jang Ma Ri who is a student with longstanding and intense feelings for Kyung Joon. She will do anything to be near him no matter whose body he’s in. I do want to give a little praise to a young Suzy here. This isn’t a particularly likable character, but Suzy owned Ma Ri and made her a lot of fun. I always enjoyed her when she was on screen.
Big is a drama that came out in 2012 and has been on my watch list for about a decade. It also comes from one of my favorite writers, the Hong sisters. So why has it been sitting on my list for so long? The drama was known for being a lot of fun for a good chunk, but the ending seemed to be quite hated by many. It was talked about A LOT.
And this drama wasn’t very old when I first started watching dramas, so I just had plenty of others to choose from. It felt a bit risky and just fell by the wayside for all of these years. But I was in the mood for an older rom-com, and now was finally the time.
So first of all, I absolutely loved the vibe and atmosphere of this drama. Right from the beginning, it feels like a 2012 drama which is right in my sweet spot for a time period I love. It’s got that Hong sisters drama vibe with its comedy, quirky characters, and lots of fun music played repeatedly. I seriously loved the feel of this series.
I would say the first two-thirds are the best and quite a bit of fun with the body switching shenanigans. There’s plenty of humor watching Kyung Joon interact with Da Ran and her family. Gong Yoo is fantastic and really delivers on the comedy of a teen being stuck in an adult’s body. It’s all mostly light-hearted fun.
VAGUE SPOILERS BELOW
We do get an interesting love triangle here. It’s unusual for both male leads to mostly be presented in the same body since we only get a very small portion of each guy in their original body at the very beginning. Da Ran very much loved Yoon Jae, but after Kyung Joon takes over his body, some questions arise about him that need to be pieced together.
At first, she only sees Yoon Jae despite Kyung Joon being there, but slowly, she gets to know Kyung Joon and some confusion sets in. We see her wrestle a lot with her feelings. The two have a very fun, bickering type of chemistry. A lot of it is a bit childish, but very slowly, they both mature. It takes a while, but I think both characters develop nicely by the end.
END OF SPOILERS
Now, the latter third does get a bit repetitive at times. There’s a lot of fighting and making up between Da Ran and Kyung Joon which makes some parts feel draggy. There is still a back story pushing forward though which definitely helped to move things a long during this time. That back story is a bit more on the melo side, but not too heavy. So know that this is one of those rom-coms that gets more serious as it goes.
Now for the ending I had heard so much disappointment in. For me personally, it wasn’t that bad. It was definitely a bit sloppy and not near as satisfying as it could have been, but I understood what they were going for, and it was fine enough. It’s a bit confusing at first glance, but enough details are given in the lead up that’s it’s not too hard to figure out what they were trying to accomplish. I’ve definitely seen far worse endings in kdramas than this one. That being said, I’m pretty laid back about endings, and I think most people won’t like it very much.
So overall, I had a good time with Big. I’m sad I waited a decade to watch it as I think I would have liked it even more back then, but even so, I quite liked it. It might be a bit too dated for a lot of drama fans, but I thoroughly enjoyed the old school vibe and atmosphere. It did the rom-com that gets more melo as it goes thing I like, and it was just fun. It has its issues, but it was what I was looking for at this moment in time.
My Rating: 7/10
Check out more Korean Drama Reviews.
Leave a Reply