Review: 六弄咖啡館isn’t anything like 我的少女时代. It destroys the genre altogether

Like many people, I’ve often read reviews online about a particular movie before spending my hard-earned money on one. As it is a Taiwan movie, I couldn’t find many reviews about 六弄咖啡館 in English, and the few that I found mostly gave praises. And with a radio station constantly advertising it, I’ve high expectations of this movie.

Taiwan has created a relatively new genre: the coming-of-age movie, focusing on high school (secondary school) first love, primarily used to evoke memories of our own secondary school first love. Served together as an idol movie, it has worked very well: 那些年，我們一起追的女孩 started the trend and broke several box office records in 2011, and 我的少女時代 last year sealed the deal for this genre: it received a 5-out-of-5-star review in The New Paper, and became the highest-grossing Taiwan film in China.

So, in comes 六弄咖啡館 that has almost the exact same formula: a high school romance, a comedy / romance and a theme song that might well overshadow the popularity of the movie. Well, don’t reinvent the wheel, they said. But here, they didn’t reinvent the wheel—they made it one of the worst Taiwan movies I’ve ever watched.

The seats available was a dead giveaway: one a Friday night, there were less than six people in the cinema. I should have followed the advice given in Shark Tank: The best review or feedback is from sales, and not people.

The plot of the movie is pretty much predictable—that’s perfectly fine, since this genre always has the same storyline. What this genre does well is the quotes said by the characters, the jokes, scenes that remind us of our teenage years and most importantly, extremely likeable characters.

Unfortunately, 六弄咖啡館 has nothing. Or maybe it has, but it just doesn’t work for me.

Firstly, the quotes. 六弄咖啡館 tried to up its game by even having the quotes splashed on the screen—but these quotes are just so boring, so unrelatable and so…forgettable. Remember 我的少女时代’s “when a girl says she’s fine, she isn’t”? That’s so simple, but everyone remembers that because that’s how some girls feel. In 六弄咖啡館? It’s so forgettable, I can’t even remember one quote at all.

Next, the jokes. Okay, giving credit where it’s due, there’re some jokes that are pretty funny, but that’s that. And all those funny jokes are in the trailer—so you might just laugh more at the trailer instead of the movie. Meh.

Thirdly, scenes that remind us of our teenage years…what can I say about this? Do we all fight until we land up in hospital? Do we dance like crazy horses? And also, only about 20% of the movie is set during their teenage years. The rest? Boring~

Finally, the characters. 我的少女时代 and 那些年，我們一起追的女孩 have characters so likeable that people would be secretly rooting for them in the cinema, or get angry at the ending if it’s not what they’ve wanted. Here, the ending isn’t exactly what I’ve expected, but I just go, “Meh, so what,” because the characters are just like pawns meant for the trailer. Like, seriously: they’re so forgettable, unrealistic and boring, I think a Taiwanese idol drama that’s free to watch is much better.

My verdict? Unless you’ve not watched 我的少女时代 and 那些年，我們一起追的女孩, you might like it. But if you have, you’ll definitely subconsciously do the comparison and think that the genre could well have been destroyed altogether by a bad movie.

六弄咖啡館 is in cinemas now. Check out the showtimes here.

This article was first published on goodyfeed.com