South Korean film “Stars in the Ordinary Universe” attempts to be absurd and funny, but the result is mediocre and middling in my humble opinion. Consisting of three individual acts connected with each other to some degree, the movie reaches for any meaning in our life and existence, but, not so surprisingly, there is not any answer even at the end, and, sadly, we do not get enough laugh from that.   

The first act is about one high school girl’s rather silly quest for finding the answer on the meaning of her meager existence. After watching a YouTube video clip made by some questionable dude talking a lot about his ludicrous genetic theory, she decides to go outside her school for just finding the meaning of her inconsequential life, and she even visits that dude just for listening more to whatever he says in front of her and the camera.

Nevertheless, she only finds herself wandering more and more without any clear answer in front of her, and the movie dryly follows her quest without much direction. Several absurd things happen to her, but none of them gives any clear answer for her, and that makes her more confused and frustrated before she eventually arrives at her own conclusion.   

The first act is the weakest part in the movie because it feels like a barebone one-joke comedy still in the need of more narrative development, but its overall mood is buoyed by the likable performance from Park Seo-yoon. She did a good job of handling a couple of deadpan moments reminiscent of the early works of Wes Anderson, and she will probably move onto better things to come after this film.  

The second act is about a beggar who briefly appears in the previous act. He talks about how ambitious he was even when he was a little boy, and we get a series of absurd moments showing how he clumsily tried to accomplish his goal in one way or another. For example, he tried to be the prefect of his classroom when he was young, but his attempt was quickly crushed, and this pattern went on and on throughout his life.

Nevertheless, he was not deterred at all, and then he met a woman who had been always special to me since their childhood. As they got closer to each other, she wanted him to be more serious about their relationship, but, of course, he was too occupied with his ambitious goal from the start, and that eventually led to the end of their relationship.

And we see more of how he failed again and again no matter how much he tried to reach for his goal. At one point, he tries to establish his own political party for running for the upcoming presidential election later, but he only ends up getting ridiculed a lot by others, and then he becomes all the more frustrated when he has to take care of the huge debt caused by the failure of his father’s business.

Just like the previous act, the second act feels like being stretched a bit too thin, but it is not entirely devoid of amusement at least. Sim Kyu-ho is effective in his low-key acting, and his deliberately monotonous monologues could be more amusing if it were accompanied with more comic development from the screenplay by director/writer Kim Bo-won, who also did the editing besides serving as one of the co-producers of the film.

The third act, which is incidentally the funniest part of the movie, is about a guy who cannot help but tell hard truths to others around them. Just like any other truth teller, he is not so welcomed by others to say the least, and that is evident when he rambles on and on about the universe and human existence before his girlfriend comes to realize that he wants to break up with her.

After that, we get a series of moments which feel rather repetitive but occasionally hilarious at least. The guy keeps telling a truth to one person after another, and he always has to deal with the consequences of his incorrigible compulsion. Nevertheless, he keeps going no matter how often he gets beaten or slapped, and he eventually ends up spending some time with the aforementioned beggar, who does not mind hearing any hard truth from his new company because, well, he does not get easily upset as a man with nothing to lose.

Around that narrative point, the third act begins to spin its wheel, and the following ending is not that satisfying, but Oh Dong-min and several other performers stick to their deadpan acting style to the end. In fact, Oh is actually much funnier compared to when he was hopelessly stuck in “Next Door” (2022), which I vehemently detested for many reasons.    

In conclusion, “Stars in the Ordinary Universe” is mildly amusing at times, but all of its three acts unfortunately come to wear out their welcome within 10 minutes. While I have to admit that I did laugh more than once during my viewing, I also became impatient from time to time despite its rather short running time (70 minutes), and the overall result feels like a mere test run for whatever may come next in the director’s career. Although this is his first feature film, he still looks like being in the middle of the transition between short and feature film, and I can only hope that he will soon move onto the next steps and then impress me a lot more in the future.