Review | Netflix movie review: What Happened to Mr. Cha? – Korean comedy satirises celebrity culture via cheeky turn by Cha In-pyo
- A fading South Korean celebrity gets trapped in a school that collapses while he’s taking a shower
- Kim Dong-kyu’s film moves from a sharp satire about celebrity to basic slapstick comedy, and is the poorer for that
2.5/5 stars
A once popular actor now languishing in middle-age obscurity is given an opportunity for self-reflection when he is trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building. What begins as a barbed satire about the fickle nature of celebrity, however, soon becomes weighed down by its own cumbersome premise.
What Happened to Mr. Cha? marks the directorial debut of Kim Dong-kyu, one of the co-screenwriters of gritty Korean thriller Confession of Murder (2012) and Hong Kong actioner Golden Job (2018). Kim also provided the score for Ryoo Seung-wan’s debut feature Die Bad, and now tries his hand at meta-comedy.
Cha In-pyo plays a fictionalised version of himself, one-time star of a string of hit drama series, with a signature finger wag that his ageing fans remember fondly to this day. Despite retaining his chiselled physique, and despite the best efforts of his manager A-ram (Cho Dal-hwan), Cha’s star has waned, and today he is reduced to shooting commercials for mid-range athleisure brands.
Out of the blue, Cha books a career-resuscitating talk-show appearance alongside heavyweight actors, played by Song Kang-ho, Sol Kyung-gu and Lee Byung-hun, but after a calamitous hike with his dog, he sneaks into an abandoned girls’ school to use the showers, only for the building to collapse on top of him.