Wrong Carriage, Right Groom (2023) - Final Review

Final review/rating: Wrong Carriage, Right Groom (2023) - Cute and clichéd romance on a familiar trope 

This is 6.5/10 stars ✮✮✮✮✮✮ from Pandafan🐼

Overall rating:         6.5 Stars Plot:                       6 Stars Acting/cast:            6 Stars Couple chemistry:   7 stars Music:                    7 Stars Re-watch value:      2 Stars Enjoyment factor:   6.5 Stars

Wrong Carriage, Right Groom (2023) is a fluffy cheap and cheerful 24 episode romance, that is entirely predictable.  It is a remake of the original 2001 drama of the same name which I have not watched, so I can't compare this 2023 version to the original and can only judge it on its own merits.   

My verdict is that if you are wanting a fluffy low stakes drama that you don't have to engage your brain to watch, this one fits the bill. Both sets of leads are very cute, especially the Ao Rui Peng and Tian Xie Wei pairing, but this drama is definitely well within their comfort zones and does not stretch them as actors (which is understandable given the genre). The second pairing of Bai Bing Ke and Zhao Shun Ran have much less screen time, but also turn in competent and cute performances.  

Worth a watch if you are a fan of Ao Rui Peng and/or Tian Xie Wei but don't expect it to rock your world - it gets a bit draggy and repetitive in the middle and would have been better with 20 episodes or less.  

SPOILERS AHEADS

A predictable romcom plot

The plot is in the name of the drama really - Wrong Carriage, Right Groom.  For a spoiler free synopsis, see mine 👉here. It is a tried and true trope of the romance genre - in the land of romance, true love and your true pairing is always fated to happen even if it means you have to get into the 'wrong' carriage to meet the right groom.  

The drama starts well, if predictably.  Two high born ladies are reluctantly preparing to be married off.  One is Li Yu Hu (played by Tian Xie Wei), a plucky martial-arts loving girl, who is the opposite of ladylike demureness, and en route to marrying General Yuan Bu Qu (played by Zhao Shun Ran).  The other is Du Bing Yan (played by Bai Bing Ke) an intelligent ladylike beauty, enroute to marrying Qi Tian Lei (played by Ao Rui Peng) the invalid 3rd young master of the Qi household.  

Both brides are wearing the same wedding dress, accessories, and being carried in the same model of wedding sedan. (Yeah, nothing will go wrong, for sure 🤣) 

A bout of rain causes both to stop by at a temple, where they meet and become sworn sisters. Both step into the 'wrong' carriage, only to eventually find that they have definitely gotten the right groom. Thereafter Li Yu Hu and Qi Tian Lei join hands to unmask Qi Tian Lei's villainous cousin Ke Shi Zhao and to restore the Qi household, whilst General Yuan Bu Qu and Du Bing Yan join hands to conquer problems on the battlefield and off.  Throw in a number of other secondary couples, some obligatory mild melodrama, and happy-ever-afters all round, and it's a wrap.

What worked and what didn't

Wrong Carriage, Right Groom (2023) works because it is the kind of drama that you know what you are getting right from the start - fluffy, low stakes fun, on a shoestring budget.  It is a feel good drama where the good guys always win against the bad guys (Li Yu Hu and Qi Tian Lei run rings around the villainous Ke Shi Zhao) and true love always prevails.  

Tian Xie Wei as Li Yu Hu

The drama is hardly ambitious in terms of plot.  What works is the sheer cuteness of Tian Xie Wei's Li Yu Hu and Ao Rui Peng's Qi Tian Lei, who make a very cute duo. They get the lion's share of the screen time and make the most of it.  

Bubbly and cute as a button roles are ones that Tian Xie Wei can do with her eyes closed (see, for example, Be my Cat (2021); Ms Cupid in Love (2022); New Life Begins (2022)) and this drama is well within her comfort zone.  

Ao Rui Peng as Qi Tian Lei. Someone get this man another wig!

As for Ao Rui Peng, I rather liked his portrayal of a more worldly-wise type who pretends illness so that he can better investigate the shenanigans in his complicated family, and who has the smarts to protect both himself and the more naïve Li Yu Hu. (Also, who doesn't love a guy who has a secret stash of booze behind his books, and who is willing to share?) 

But whoever designed his wigs really did him dirty as they weren't very flattering. 

For a 24 episode drama, the main leads also fall in love too early in the piece (at about episode 5 or so?) so there isn't much in the way of will-they-won't-they fall in love tension.  Instead, the drama spends most of its time on how Li Yu Hu and Qi Tian Lei repeatedly best the villain and his evil henchwoman, and because these parts are not novel or terribly interesting, the drama gets draggy and repetitive, even if it does show that the duo work well as a team.  Honestly, for this type of drama I would have preferred a lot more fluffy romantic cuteness between the leads - these moments are there, but not, I feel, in sufficient quantities to justify 24 episodes.

As for the second couple, General Yuan Bu Qu and Du Bing Yan, they also deliver a competent if not completely compelling performance, but they have much less screen time to work with and their romance feels even more rushed.  

One moment Du Bing Yan is disguised unconvincingly as a male in the military camp, the next moment Yuan Bu Qu finds out she is a woman and declares his affections, all in the space of episode 8.  One gets the feeling that a lot of their scenes were cut and that this couple was there to make up the numbers... 

I feel the drama should have given the second couple more screen time so that viewers can root for their romance.  

Instead, in the later episodes (from about episode 17 onwards) even more couples are introduced, including the pouty spoilt Princess Chang Ping and Sha Ping Wei CP (which I had no interest in) as well as a melodramatic reason for why their happiness and that of Yuan Bu Qu and Du Bing Yan might be compromised.  All's well that end's well though, with everyone teaming up to make sure that true love prevails.  

By the time things wrap up at episode 24, we have five pairs of happy lovers (maybe more, I lost count), and our two main couples have a double wedding ceremony in which the grooms have to identify their identically dressed and veiled brides. It was all rather cute, but if the drama repeated the line "wrong carriage, right groom" one more time in the last few episodes, I would probably have chucked something at the screen...

Final thoughts 

🐼: Wrong Carriage, Right Groom (2023) is cute but forgettable.  Both sets of main CPs fall in love ridiculously quickly even for a romance driven drama, and there really ought to have been more cute and fluffy scenes.  

There is not enough story to justify 24 episodes of drama, and even the leads repeatedly one-upping the baddy got a little old rather quickly, meaning that the drama gets unnecessarily draggy and repetitive.  Given the cuteness of the key couples, this drama could have been more engaging with a tighter script, more substance, and a more focused storyline.  

As it is, Wrong Carriage, Right Groom (2023) is still rather cute and a good option if you want some low stakes fluffiness to unwind to after a long day. 

6.5/10 stars ✮✮✮✮✮✮