Astrid Vaz

I'd say 75% of this show is fantastic, 5% is so camp you forgive it, and the last 20% being the parts making me cringe because, and let's be honest, some parts of the show are just BAAAAAD. Some are bad on purpose, like so bad it's good. The actually bad [worst] part is the filler--uncle Li took 5 mins giving his dying speech and I was literally screaming "JUST DIE ALREADY". But if you push through (or ignore) the ridiculous scenes with a character repeating things for too long, you get to the GREAT parts! Story is actually very interesting, so I went and read the book Faraway Wanderers concurrently (which was hard as it's only partially translated by people). The biggest changes plot wise are Zhou ZiShu not knowing what his husband does for a living, and Scorpion King having motivations other than "get paid to be weird". The main cast isn't perfect but they get better as the series progresses, and I'm now prepared to protect ChengLing with my life. I got a sense that the actors worked together to bring the best performance of their character, and I really enjoyed the dynamics developed between them all. For the genre, the leads did a stellar job bringing their roles to life. As for character adaptation, I am particularly happy they kept Wen KeXing's flirtatious attitude because he is an incredibly flamboyant character. Wen KeXing fighting Ye Bai Yi was absolutely hilarious and just showed that the show runners really cared about giving the characters depth and relatable relationships. Zhou ZiShu has a lawful good attitude which I think is a bit ooc, but only because one of my favorite things about him in Faraway Wanderers was how little he cared about what happened in JianHu. I enjoyed this drama way more than I thought I would, so much so I immediately started re-watching it on Netflix. Watching behind the scenes is really fun, shows fans how much everyone involved did their best to share a story they all cared a lot about!

Dear god this was up there with worst movies ever made. There are some experienced actors here but even Vanessa Redgrave couldn't make it better. From bad accents, terrible hair and costumes, the leads all playing the younger wendy are so awful I hate watched and then cringe-watched. Omg the script was so bad. So was the directing. Supposedly there were supposed to be mother-daughter themes but they were non-existent. HOOKS HAND WAS SO FAKE. The scene by the harbor was hands down the worst. The puking, the peach eating, it was all so badly done. Ok yeah, if you're still here, please, only watch this if you want something to pick apart.