I Fine..Thank You..Love You (DVD) (Thailand Version) DVD Region 3

Director Mez Tharatorn (ATM) recognized that the arduous effort of learning English can be the stuff of great comedy when he decided to make I Fine…Thank You…Love You. The story of a popular English tutor forced to help a brutish engineer get his girlfriend back by teaching him English, the GTH romantic comedy was a smash hit in Thailand that set new box office records and became the highest grossing Thai film of 2014.

Reuniting with her ATM director, model-turned-actress Preechaya “Ice” Pongthananikorn gives a winning performance as Pleng, a star English tutor who is so good at her job that she helps her Japanese student Kaya (Japanese sex symbol Aoi Sola) pass an interview for a job transfer to the U.S. However, Kaya also needs Pleng to help her break up with her monolingual Thai boyfriend Gym (Sunny Suwanmethanon). Furious over the break-up, Gym forces Pleng to help him on his job transfer interview so that he can go to the U.S. and get Kaya back.

Like any comedy that involves language, some things are bound to be lost in translation in I Fine…. Several jokes about accents (especially involving Pleng’s assistant) and Thai wordplay don’t quite carry over in the English subtitles, and Tharatorn’s direction of the English-language scenes is often awkward. However, Tharatorn does inject inspired moments of physical humor - including a joke involving a rocket you have to see to believe – that are universal.

While Thai audiences will be tickled by the dialogue, foreign audiences will likely be charmed by the two stars instead. Speaking with nearly impeccable American-accented English, Pongthananikorn is immensely likable (albeit slightly over-the-top) as the ditzy heroine, and this film will likely be her calling card for roles abroad. Playing possibly the most handsome maintenance engineer in the world, Suwanmethanon is far more effective as the romantic lead than the comical lead who is the butt of the film’s jokes. Suwanmethanon never truly sheds his handsome looks to play the crude engineer, but it also means that the pair’s romantic moments in the second half make up some of the film’s most memorable scenes.

I Fine… is far from a perfect film – its characters are underdeveloped, the script digresses too often, and the direction is sometimes awkward – but it’s also greatly effective as a pleasant commercial comedy thanks to a strong cast and its eagerness to please. It might also make you wish that learning English is as fun as it appears to be in the film.