In “My Tutor Friend 2″ you have an entirely new set of actors & characters. The similarities between the original would be tutoring lessons (this time around the boy teaches the girl) and the male lead being a good fighter (this time around the male is an amateur boxer). The story itself centers around Japanese Junko (played by Cheong-a Lee) attending a Korean University but requiring lessons in the Korean language. She stays at a guest house and manages to get the owner’s son Jung-Man to teach her Korean. Unfortunately Jung-Man (played by Gi-Woong Park) wants nothing to do with Junko nor waste his time teaching her Korean. From there an assortment of bad jokes, seen it before moments and overly melodramatic turns of events come at you in waves. Long waves that lasted for a way too long 125 minutes.

The one aspect of “My Tutor Friend 2″ that did get it right was casting Cheong-a Lee and Gi-woong Park in the lead roles. They both had camera friendly appearances and were appealing to watch – at least for the first 15 minutes. Unfortunately the rest of the film was pure fluff and no matter how cute the lead characters were if the story is dumb so is the movie. Example being when Jung-Man continuously taught Junko naughty slang words instead of the actual Korean phrases she asked for. The first time around it was kind of amusing, but by the second or third time the joke got old. The sub-plot about Jung-Man’s amateur boxing career came out of the blue and let’s just say the boxing scenes weren’t “Crying Fist” material, nor even “Miracle on 1st Street” material. Cheesy hospital bed scenes were thrown in for more bad drama and the soundtrack was pure cheese. Annoying (overly cute) western actors were thrown in for more ill advised attempts at humor.

Given the mind numbing amount of drivel that was dished out I managed to entertain myself by picking out recognizable backdrops in the film (like the Inchon Airport, the City Hall area of Seoul, and the shopping mall in Insadong) rather than paying close attention to the film. Also the kimbop that Jung-Man’s father made and the udon soup that Junko’s father made both looked mighty good. Unfortunately that had little to do with the movie itself.