What Happened to Mr. Cha? is a Chinese produced film conducted by Kim Dong – Kyu, who is responsible for multiple Korean blockbusters as well as films well-known to Hong Kong. This film in particular is considered Kyu’s first American debut in terms of being displayed on a platform such as Netflix. The film was set to debut on January 1st of 2021.
In this particular film, the nucleus of the story revolves around an old-time classic actor , Cha In-Pyo. Back in the early 80’s and 90’s Cha starred in multiple TV dramas as well as movies, becoming a national heart throb for many drama series watchers in Asia. However, as time has progressed, Cha’s fame eventually began to dwindle, reducing him to search and scrap for mid-tier commercials, mostly for athleisure brands. For the longest time it seems as if Cha’s manager “A-ram” has been doing the best he possibly can to get Cha back in the good graces of the public eye, hoping he can film movies and be praised like the young stallion he once was. However, when his agent finally gets a breakthrough, giving him the opportunity to interview on daytime television, Cha gets caught up in a Final Destination-like accident where he becomes entrapped underneath the debris of an old school that has randomly collapsed on itself. Luckily he survives and is able to call for help, but chooses not to out of fear that if he does call for the police or an ambulance, the media will get a hold of the situation, see him being rescued from an all- girl school without clothes on, and his reputation will forever be crushed. Therefore he calls his assistant in an effort to hopefully dig Cha out single-handedly out of the rubble. This essentially becomes a tug of war between Cha’s physical well-being & his own self-absorbed ego.
Although the camera quality is acceptable and the angles help to bring the story together cohesively, the green screen effects and shifts of certain angles indicate that either the staff is one of amateur- to-little experience or the budget for the film itself may have been very miniscule. In addition to that, although it is a comedy , there are so many antics and digressions in between that it makes it even more difficult to keep up with the overall plot of the story, which already isn’t clearly defined until about 90 minutes in.
Overall the rating of this movie would be a 4.5 out of 10.