As of this review, I have seen 907 South Korean movies. This piece of garbage ranks safely among the bottom 20.
A highschool guy changes his fashion sense and becomes more popular, but becomes a target by bullies. This movie feels like it was made for teenage girls who like to watch guys strut around, doing nothing interesting whatsoever. The humor is incompetent and the characters are wafer thin. The bully subplot is a dumb scriptwriting decision that clashes horribly with the rest of the movie; it feels like a desperate attempt to add fake depth. The fashion elements are embarrassing and not the least bit engaging. This is so devoid of content that it quickly becomes annoying, and it's frankly almost impossible to sit through.
South Korea, along with Japan, has developed an outstanding pedigree for films concerning teenagers and/or children. Just in the past handful of years they have delivered A Brand New Life (2009), Thread of Lies (2014), Bleak Night (2010), Han Gong-ju (2014), Duresori: The Voice of East (2012), Silenced (2011), Pluto (2012), and Sunny (2011) – just to name a few. They have also made some fairly recent teenage comedies that were really good. I have greatly enjoyed some of their more light-hearted films.
With that said, Fashion King (2014) is a pile of elephant manure. There's zero charm, zero laughs, and the serious elements are offensively bad.
