A Dream Within a Dream – An Unexpected Wacky Comedy Disguised as a Costume Drama

If I had to describe Liu Yuning and Li Yitong’s A Dream Within a Dream 书卷一梦, it’d have to be wacky. The story centres on Li Yitong’s character Song Xiaoyu, an actress who finds herself thrown inside a book to become the heroine Song Yimeng. Only, said story is a sadistic one which ends with her getting tortured to death by the cruel male lead. Thanks to her familiarity with the script, Yimeng attempts to escape the villain Nan Heng (Liu Yuning) many times. Viewers meanwhile are treated to hilarious scenes of her avoidance tactics and him trying (but failing) to have her unalived .. to his own detriment.

If there’s ever going to be a third (invisible) character to this pairing, I reckon it’s gotta to be the script which clearly has a will of its own and has its own way of ensuring things happen as it should based on the written story. Nonetheless, it’s still hilarious to see Nan Heng try and then get thwarted every time. Death by arrow? Check. Except the script ‘forces’ Nan Heng to run after the arrow he just dispatched and shield her with his body to save her. Why not strangle her then? Well his right hand had other ideas and just tried to claw off the left one that’s wringing her neck. I guess the moral to the story here is that one simply cannot change their fate – or in this case, go off the script.

Based on Real Life Experiences in Chinese Entertainment?

Meanwhile, even the show’s screenwriter trended for realistically capturing all the craziness that is the Chinese entertainment industry. I guess the situations “real life” Song Xiaoyu and mega star Nan Feng found themselves in – from having a giant entourage to stand-ins, hijacking of rankings and casting horror stories not to mention some of the ridiculous demands of artists, were so real Netizens joked the screenwriter must’ve been burned by someone in the industry IRL that he had to capture it in a script.

In response, the screenwriter claimed it’s all fictional and cautioned viewers not to take it all too seriously. “I’m not! I didn’t! I don’t know!!!! I’m just an ordinary an ordinary creator”.

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