Park Seo Joon and IU have created quite the stir with their pairing ever since Dream was announced to be released on Netflix on July 25th, 2023. It makes sense since Park Seo Joon rarely disappoints with his choices, and there has been so much buzz around him ever since his casting was announced for The Marvels. We are absolutely unenthusiastic about his upcoming venture with the Avengers, but the opportunity it has presented for him to be discovered by global audiences outside of the Hallyu wave is immense.
Coming to IU, she is a hardworking and beautiful performer who is one of the better-known Korean actresses outside the country. Be it Scarlet Heart: Ryeo or Hotel Del Luna, she has always been remarkable, even though it physically hurts our hearts that she never has any chemistry with the male protagonists of her dramas. That is why we are glad that we did not detect a romantic angle in the trailer for Dream.
Park Seo Joon and IU’s characters seem to have a friendship in the movie, but that is it, and we are happy because we would not have been able to bear another forced love story of IU, that too with the likes of Park Seo Joon, who always has chemistry with the female protagonists of his stories. While we see IU as more of a dedicated performer than an accomplished actress, her role in Dream seems to be right up her alley and something she won’t have to struggle with too much. There are notes of everything she has done before, and her star power is something to reckon with, so Dream has to be one of her easier jobs. As for Park Seo Joon, he is a surprise when it comes to deadpan comedy, and if his stint as Park Ki Joon in Midnight Runners is anything to go by, Dream will be similarly hilarious.
‘Dream’ Possible Plotline
The broad gist of the movie that we gained from the trailer is that Yoon Hong Dae, portrayed by Park Seo Joon, plays a successful game of soccer, which will probably be shown at the beginning of the film. If we understood the moment right, there was a fair bit of aggression in those few seconds of the game presented in the trailer. This is somehow reminding us of an Indian film titled Chak De India, where an innocent moment was captured and presented by the cameras as being something nefarious. Similar to that, maybe some part of the game was misconstrued by the reporters, or they asked a deliberately offensive question, and Yoon Hong Dae, instead of brushing it off, responded with anger and punched the wide-eyed reporter’s nose. Since Dream is a comedy, we want to know whether the man’s plastic surgery survived the punch.
In the next step of the trailer, we see Yoon Hong Dae as the coach of the national soccer team. We can assume that either some years have passed since the punching incident, or it is an immediate measure to do some damage control for Yoon Hong Dae. Our bets are on the latter since the documentary director, Lee So Min, speaks in the present tense when talking about Hong Dae and the games. Hong Dae wanted to be on a reality show to do some image repair and present his side of the story, but he only got a documentary. This must mean that Hong Dae cannot fix his image right away but has to rely on the outcome of the game and the documentary to do that.
Lee So Min and Yoon Hong Dae definitely don’t like each other, but they have to work together for inescapable reasons. This means that even Lee So Min has a lot riding on the documentary, which is why she encourages Hong Dae during his low periods. Since this is a Korean film, we expect an angle of past connections or some trauma that haunts at least one of the protagonists.
On the other hand, this has to be an underdog story, seeing that no one on the soccer team looks like a player. What kind of national championship are they competing in? The players are certainly going to hate Hong Dae before learning to recognize his leadership, and the man is also going to resolve whatever issues he has from his past through his journey with the team, with Lee Soo Min staunchly by his side.
Conclusion
The name Dream itself suggests that the movie is a story of the ambitions of people from different rungs of society. Park Seo Joon has become quite a master of underdog stories, with Fight For My Way and Itaewon Cass still at the top of the list of dramas to watch. We have very average expectations for the story itself, but we expect the comedy to bring out a few chuckles. It has been a while since we saw a good sports movie, though we can’t be sure if Dream is that or if soccer simply takes a backseat to Yoon Hong Dae’s journey. We know it is a comedy, but we don’t want to hear even a parody of a dialogue like “you don’t know the highs and lows of football,” like Archie from Riverdale had said. But other than that, does anyone feel that IU’s role is going to be that of another female enabler? She exists to pull Hong Dae out of his rut and his low points. We suspect that the movie is going to paint her job as her personality. As much as we may not be fond of her, her hard work deserves a better role.
Overall, we suspect this movie is going to be okay. Its main attraction is the casting of Park Seo Joon and IU together, and we are going to watch it simply for that. Of course, we would love to have a different opinion after watching the film, but as of now, our expectations are mediocre.
