Best movie ever!

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

What a bizarre movie. It was adapted from a Jap yaoi (gay) comic so that probably accounts for why it's so fantastical in nature and why all too many things don't make sense. While they gave the four characters interesting back stories, their motivations were still often random and unexplained. The lead character is a rich kid who decides to open a patisserie to meet girls. He is determinedly straight but gives in a lot to his flaming chef (though resisting his advances). The chef, who's a "gay of demonic charm," lol, has an unrequited crush on the straight guy and a French ex-boyfriend who's trying to steal him away for his own patisserie. Then there is the apprentice chef, who's an ex-boxer of indeterminate sexuality and totally devoted to the chef. And the last guy is the straight guy's "bodyguard" and the most underdeveloped character. It seemed like he was crushing on the chef but that vanished and he didn't do all that much later in the movie.So the four of them run the place and cute hijinks ensue. This lighter half of the movie was all kinds of silly but frequently had me smiling and laughing. The cinematography made the movie look like a dream so it was easy to just let logic go and enjoy the comedy and the sight of the many lovely cakes they paraded. It's too bad Antique gets bogged down later with dark drama involving kidnappings and implied pedophilia that were quite discordant to the fluffy earlier half. These scenes are still punctuated with some humor but the movie just never quite recovers. If it had all been sunshine and rainbows, I would've given the movie a solid 10 and put it as a potential favorite but as it is, I'm still considering buying the DVD.

I have to admit that I underestimate this movie in the first place. Ithough is just an eye candy movie full of gorgeous man and delicious body to enjoy. But I was wrong.Another confession, I have to watch it 2 times in a row since in the first time, I lost focus, drown by beautiful cakes in this movie. Every time these work of art appears, I lost the story and get hypnotized :) And as sweet as the cake is Joo Ji Hun. Since I watched him in TV drama "Goong" and also "Devil", I am not really impress with his acting as much as with his look. But here, he can show the range of expressions, fragile yet strong, mature but still have the boy's charm in him.

Korean film based on Fumi Yoshinaga's comic called Antique Bakery which was the basis for Japanese TV series and an upcoming animated series. its concerns a man can't stand cake who opens a bakeshop, his chef who went to high school with him and who is love with his boss, the son of the owners former house keeper and a young man who answers the help wanted sign and is training to be a chef. How the quartet interact and how they build their business is the story. And what a story it is. It mixes comedy, drama romance, food (lots of food- enough you'll want to raid a bakery after finishing it) and musical numbers all together into a frothy confection that makes you feel good and smile from ear to ear. I've seen the film now more or less three times and I find myself smiling from ear to ear every time thanks to the interaction of characters.You like the four men and you care deeply about them. Their chatter between each other is witty and on target and you can't help but enjoy watching them go through their paces. Yes several of the characters are gay but don't let that stop you since the film is all about the people and not the sexual orientation. I really like this film a great deal because it makes me smile. High art its not. Heart warming and laugh inducing it is. As they say in the film How can anyone be unhappy when they are eating cake? this film is the cinematic equivalent of cake and will make you happy.

"Can anyone be unhappy while eating cake?" First of all this movie is hard to be "labelled" under a specific category. It's not really a fluffy comedy as the trailer might suggests as it has a thriller element, it's not really a gay movie as the main character is a straight male. Howeever what I do know is that Antique is surprisingly good and leaves a sweet aftertaste.The movie is pretty faithful to the Japanese manga/comic which it is based, and they try to cram as much content as possible into this 110+ minutes. The only drawback is that the dialogue is so fast (in the first half of the movie) sometimes it's hard to catch up and also that it might not have as much of an emotional impact compared to the pages of the comic book when it's being read slowly. That being said, this movie is the best adaptation out there. Yup, Antique bakery has been adapted into a Japanese TV series (the gay aspect was completely cut off), Japanese anime series (poorly directed mess), and a Chinese/Taiwan TV series.This movie has all the ingredients (comical moments, thriller, slice-of-life drama, romance) in different proportions and the director successfully turn them into a charming film with a lot of heart. And lastly....WHO COULD FORGET THOSE WONDERFUL CAKES. Trust me there are moments when I can't decide whether I should pick the cakes or the beautiful people. So the judgment: satisfied for now and will be back for more.