Dasepo sonyo

The myriad of colours, song and dance all bring about a very madcap feel to Dasepo Naughty Girls, based on an internet comic strip. In essence a series of short stories or skits woven together, it tells the story of the students of No Use High, a multi-religious schools where monks, nuns, priests, and atheists all study common general subjects under one roof.

The opening credits sequence had brought a smile to my face, and throughout the movie, the injection of song and dance made Dasepo Naughty Girls resemble Grease, albeit weaker in the flow of story lines and subplots, and of course not as polished, at times disjointed even with weak transitions.

Other than that, the movie does live up to its being "naughty", and is thoroughly cheeky with its bizarre multitude of characters - like the girl with a "poverty" doll sticking behind her back, an exchange student from Switzerland, the mysterious principal, a one eyed cyclops, a cross dresser, a girl born with a male member, and the list goes on.

Most of the skits had the usual expected punchlines to its scenes, no doubt similar in style and delivery like the 80s Hong Kong "mo-lei-tau" comedies with sexual innuendos. However, it's breezy and light, and without a doubt, it fulfils the goal of being pure entertainment.

A guilty pleasure. This is a teen high-school comedy about, well high-school life. Sure the jokes are silly and it's a musical, but still it has enough going for it in terms of bizarreness and creativity.

A girl with poverty on her back is forced into prostitution with a cross-dresser who wants to giggle and talk about the newest idols, she is in love with the son of a rich Swiss family who in turn is in love with the trans gender brother/sister of the sole virgin in the class, the cyclop.

Partly a mocking of the musical, the TV drama and the high-school comedy it has some nice touches apart from that.

I saw this at the 2008 Palm Springs International Film Festival. It's one of those films that make you ask yourself, why was this film made, who was it made for and why would a popular film festival accept it's submission? I, admittedly had a few smiles into the first 20 minutes of the film. Several in the audience were laughing out loud but by about the half-way point of the films run time the laughter was reduced to a couple of awkward giggles and by three quarters into it there was complete stunned silence. This is a film based on an Internet comic strip called Multi Cell Girl and should have stayed that way. Maybe if this had been made into a 20 minute short film it may have worked better but it played itself out and then beat itself to death in a slow and agonizing limp to the closing credits. Wong-Jong Lee was good as Big Razor Sis and OK-bin Kim was good as Poor Girl. The teacher was entertaining. Condensed into a 20 minute short would have worked better. I would give this a very generous 4.5 out of 10.