“Don’t Tell Papa” is a somewhat endearing film about an 8-year-old boy, Cho-woo (played superbly by Seung-ho Yu), who lives with his single father. His father works for meager wages in a nightclub as an MC. His boss keeps him employed because he’s cheap.
Cho-woo has quite a difficult life. He never met his mother, whom he believes to be dead, because she ran away to the United States shortly after she was born. Her parents are rich and embarrassed because her daughter was not married when she got pregnant. Cho-woo must spend all his after-school hours at the club with his father. Cho-woo and the owner’s son fight constantly, which causes more trouble between his father and his boss.
Finally, Cho-woo’s mother reappears in Korea. She meets her ex-lover and her son, but the two don’t recognize each other. When she finally finds out who he is and that the boy she has fallen in love with is her son, she decides that she wants to be a part of her life now. Cho-woo’s father knows he’s not perfect, but he doesn’t feel like she has the right, after 8 years, to barge in and tell him how to raise her child. The boy, not knowing that the woman is her mother, has fallen in love with her and tries to get her father to marry her. This causes more problems between father and son.
The main problem with this movie is that it tries unsuccessfully to mix humor and drama. If the humor was really funny, it might have been a different story. All the jokes are nothing more than a mixture of vulgarity and profanity that only detracts from the real story, that of a motherless child looking for answers.
However, on the other side of the coin, we find young Seung-ho Yu putting in a beautiful performance as the confused and naive little boy whose greatest pleasure in life is pleasing his father. Every scene of him, whether it’s laughing, crying or just reflecting on life around him, is memorable and warm. This movie is worth watching, but it could have been so much better without all the unnecessary dirt and obscenity the viewer has to go through to get to the heart of the story.
