Intro

Our lovable members Yenny, Lim, Sohee, Sun Ye, & Yubin also known as the Wonder Girls star in their first movie and also first mainstream introduction to the American audience on Nickelodeon nonetheless.  Obviously, I watched the movie because I’m a “Wonderful”.

Plot

The Wonder Girls are already an established group based out of Seoul, South Korea and are ready to take the United States by storm.  They start off their invasion with New York City because if you could make it there, you could make it anywhere, right?  There’s so much they’d like to see, but naturally as performers, they want to perform and make it at The Apollo which is a venue a lot of aspiring artists try to rock.  The Apollo is where dreams are either made or shattered.

Over the course of the movie, they encounter various obstacles such as a rival group they meet at amateur night at The Apollo, how to adapt their style to the American culture, J.Y. Park’s (their manager) strict routine, and each other.

Good

I think it’s a very cute movie suited for the demographics for Nickelodeon.  I thought it was charming and very humorous.  I liked the elements of how they gradually introduced the K-Pop idols to the American audience without jamming it down our throats.

I enjoyed the comic relief character in J.Y. Park especially how he over reacts when his girls leave to go somewhere.  His pajamas with the footsies were funny as well because I was unaware they made them that size.

I am very surprised at how good their English really was.  There wasn’t a lick of Korean spoken in this movie as it would have been easy to do with subtitles.  They even spoke to each other in English which really pushed them to perform very well.

Bad

Although English isn’t their first language, it isn’t an excuse for their acting to be on the lower end of the spectrum.  I understand that they don’t have as much acting experience especially in America, but I would have thought that their agency would help with that. To be fair, it’s not like they were expected to win an Oscar or an Emmy for their acting abilities.

I felt that a lot of the spotlight went on Yenny as a lot of the movie featured her.  She had a romantic link and was outcasted when she insulted her fellow girls.  I felt that all five members should have gotten a chance to shine in the solo roles.

I felt that I’ve seen this movie before about a five member girl group from another country going on silly adventures while trying to make it big in America.  Oh yeah! That’s right. The Spice Girls did it back in 1997 with pretty much the same story line with “Spice World”.

Overview

I watched this movie because I was shocked to find out that they did a movie on Nickelodeon in English.  I had just recently become a fan of theirs and was researching what they did in entertainment and went across that platform.  It’s been years since I had watched Nickelodeon on the serious side since “The Rugrats” became more than an afterthought.

I thought it was a bold move for the Wonder Girls to star in an American movie to introduce them to a whole new audience even if it was on network television.  I believe that it did a lot to help raise their profile especially since they had songs in English as well like “Nobody” and “Be My Baby”.  They could be the first K-Pop idol stars to successfully cross over into American entertainment.

I’ve stated earlier that this movie reminded me “Spice World”.  I don’t fault the Wonder Girls for making the movie. I think it lies on the writing team of the movie.  I figured that you could only add so much to the movie in the 45 minutes given to them without commercial break.  As a fan of theirs, I was upset that they weren’t given the opportunity to showcase their full potential by airing their performances of “Nobody” and “Be My Baby” in its entirety because I’ve seen those them live and became a fan after it.

Overall Rating: 2.5/5

Reviewed by: Mr. Timtastic