As a movie lover who grew up on John Hughes and other filmmakers like him, I was trained from an early age to expect that high school would be filled with archetypes: bullies, popular kids, jocks, nerds and humorless and gruff authority figures. While we've evolved since then (at least a tiny bit), there's something about some of those now-classic '80s movies that remains endearing even if some of the characters and plot details feel problematic or downright silly by today's standards.
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When I noticed that the new Netflix original movie, Love Untangled, was trending on the platform's Global Top 10 list, I knew I needed to give it a shot as a lifelong fan of teen movies. Love Untangled is a high school romance set in 1998 and features all of the character tropes above, and then some.
The film's logline explains that it "follows 19-year-old Park Se-ri as she plans to straighten her perpetually frizzy hair before making a life-changing confession, all while getting entangled with transfer student Han Yun-seok." I assumed from that description that the film would be a little like Can't Buy Me Love -- where the protagonist cooks up a scheme to gain the affection of the popular kids -- and in some respects, it is. But I also expected that it would stay on the lighter, sillier side. After all, the crux of the movie is about a teenager's untamed hair and how it affects her love life, but the film has much more depth than you'd expect, and the complexity and darker storylines offset the more playful aspects of the movie.
Park Se-ri (Shin Eun-soo) blames her unluckiness in love on the fact that she has curly hair. Se-ri is a twin, and the unfair reality is that her sister has straight, smooth hair and no trouble snagging a boyfriend. Se-ri, meanwhile, stays tucked away in the bathroom trying to manage her mane for hours on end, blaming her hair for all her problems.
Se-ri has a major crush on Hyun, the biggest hunk in school, and would do anything to make him like her. But alas, her big hair means he'll never fall for her -- at least not by the governing social rules. Se-ri and her friends befriend a new kid in school, the quiet and reserved Han Yun-seok (Gong Myoung), and when Se-ri learns that Yun-seok's mother is a hairstylist, she cozies up to his mom in hopes of getting a deal on her services so she can look cute and impress Hyun.
Even though Se-ri is doing everything she can to catch Hyun's eye, it's the authentic relationship she forms with Yun-seok that becomes the real romance of the film. Shin Eun-soo is instantly lovable as Se-ri, who is full of life, charm and a sense of adventure. She's the complete opposite of Yun-seok, who rarely speaks, but when he does, it's with pure honesty and heart. These young actors elevate the movie from a sometimes silly, superficial teen romance to something more, especially when the themes get darker later on in the film and we learn how Yun-seok and his mother arrived in town. While the film's first half focuses on Se-ri's romantic hijinks, the tone shifts toward the end (and may leave you fully in tears) as Yun-seok's backstory becomes the focus, and the gravity of his family situation sets in.
It almost seems unfair that Love Untangled focuses so much attention on Se-ri's hair. Though that may set the film's initial events in motion, there's so much more to it than just that. A bittersweet romance that totally captures the bliss of high school crushes (and SPOILER: It does result in a happy ending), the film has earned its spot in the Top 10 for good reason. It's pure, heartwarming magic.