Lovin' Fat People

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I just finished watching TVB's "To Grow With Love" (肥田囍事, starring Andy Hui and Myolie Wu), and I'm not sure if I love it or not. OK, I love love love the music. So much so that I went ahead and purchased Andy Hui's In the Name Of... CD just so I could listen to the theme songs in their entirety over and over again. I think I must have listened to the entire album at least 5 times today while in the office. More on that later.

The series did a good job of saying that fat people have a right to love. Myolie gained 50 pounds to play the role of the fat but lovelorn protagonist who believed that her soulmate would understand a painting she vandalized by stamping a yellow handprint on it. If you don't get it, then you're not her soulmate. ~spoiler alert~ The gist was that her soulmate would interpret the handprint as petals of a sunflower, and would fill in the blanks, mainly, add the stem to the flower.

Anyhow, the series covered everything you can think that would concern a fat person. The ability/inability to attract someone from the opposite sex if you're fat. Dangers of anorexia. Stigma of designing fashionable clothes for fat people; in this case, adding the size LARGE to a repertoire of smalls and mediums. Healthy dieting and exercising vs. taking laxatives to lose weight. Stereotypes that fat people equal slobby and unprofessional. Is this a TV series or public service announcement?

Since this was supposedly loosely based on "Bridget Jones' Diary," there are comedic episodes throughout, but this version of Bridget lacks the wit and sarcasm of Renée Zellwegers' version. Also, I don't know how many times I had to stomach the super sappy love scenes that literally made me want to gag. I mean, there's hot romance, and then there's the "beat me over the head I get it they love each other beyond no comparison" scenes. There were some mad cheeeeeeesey moments that I never want to relive.

Goosebump Scene


Aside from the gut-wrenching moments, I found Myolie's character annoying in 50% of the scenes. I think if she was a real person who came into my life, I'd want to smack some common sense into her. And not 'cause she's fat. She was missing a common sense chip. Andy was much better. Everything he said was rational and realistic. So he discriminated against fat people. Not the most noble thing, but at least he was honest. This is the first time I've ever seen Andy act, but he's really natural in the role. His character was merged from Colin Firth and Hugh Grant's characters. The combination of making him not as frumpy as Colin or as suave as Hugh Grant meant that he could've just been as bland as vanilla, but he overcame that. He had enough "oomph" that you would fall for him, but enough arrogance that you can understand why Myolie would hate him. But you know how I feel about Mr. Darcy...(look at my moniker!)...I'd fall for him regardless of the pride and haughtiness. Haha...


So I guess in the end, I enjoyed the series for the messages and feel of it (it does have a nice romantic vibe in the series, like you're watching a very long romantic comedy), but obviously, they were also many scenes that I just couldn't imagine grown men sitting around a table could write, and that these actors could act w/ a straight face. But anyhow, I'm only even thinking about the series because of the music. The music! I will try to write a review on this once things are less crazy.