The two major lore genres of Hong Kong films, in addition to crime films, are comedy films.
Hong Kong-made crime films are still surviving, and Hong Kong-made comedy films are on the verge of extinction.
So I heard that " still thinks you are the best " is going to be released, or I bought a ticket.
even if 80% of it is going to be bad, but there are Huang Zihua , how must it be 20% funny.
Young viewers may no longer know who Huang Zihua is. As the first person who opened Hong Kong-style Dongduxiao (that is, Hong Kong talk show) to Red Pavilion , he is the "Zihua God" in the mouths of many fans.
Today, Huang Zihua's most widely circulated joke on the Internet comes from the Hong Kong drama " Boys and Girls Love " starring him and Zheng Yuling . Yu Letian, the cheap man he played, has contributed a lot of golden sentences for part-time jobs, and it still seems to be unmatched today.
But one thing must be admitted, Huang Zihua's achievements in laughter and TV series have not been copied to the film field at all.
In the movies he starred in, there is basically no Douban score of more than eight points. Knowing that "I still think you are the best" (hereinafter referred to as "Best") rushed to Douban 8.1 for a time, I thought it was Huang Zihua who came to be pretty.
Who knows this movie, is only old, not pretty .
01
It must be explained here that friends who like Cantonese terriers must choose the Cantonese version.
I watched the Mandarin version. In many places, I can clearly feel that it should be a joke, but because of the dubbing and cultural differences, I can't laugh at all, and the viewing experience is very bad.
For example, according to netizens, the third brother's girlfriend said that the third brother likes "long legs" at the beginning, and the original words should be "double may" - a stalk that is a bit vulgar but more natural than "long legs".
Zihua's bad Hong Kong is probably the language stalk that non-Cantonese-speaking audiences can get the most, and because of the Mandarin dubbing, it has become inexplicable and can't laugh at all.
Of course, the dubbing issue is not entirely responsible for the overall breakdown of the movie. The biggest problem with
"The Best" is that the concept of love and gender created by is completely out of touch with the current social context . The characters in the
film seem to have lived 20 years ago, and their knots, demands and transformations simply can't tickle the itch of the contemporary marriageable crowd. The two major themes of
"The Best" are love and family.
There's nothing wrong with the family view it's trying to convey. At this point, "The Best" inherits the consistent theme of nostalgic Hong Kong films: the
family is the last bastion against external social changes. The family is the only basis and meaning of the existence of the family. The theme of
is particularly evident in Hong Kong films after the millennium, and there are many excellent works that incorporate elements of love, family, and even the entire community culture into the whole film. When things change, is better than being naturally pleasing.
You will find that the protagonists of these films are struggling to stick to their own shops or some kind of craftsmanship. The parents in "The Thief of the Years" run a Luoji leather shoe store. No matter how big the wind and rain are, they must protect the roof of the shoe store. In "Whenever Changes", Eason Chan and , Miriam Yeung, , one is a pork guy and the other is a fish seller, trying to keep the vegetable market where the neighbors have been selling vegetables for a lifetime.
And what the final film wants to express is that even if shoe stores and fish stalls cannot be kept, as long as there are people, the spiritual home will never collapse.
There are lights. This typical concept of family inheritance has always been a value highly recognized by East Asian society. As a commercial comedy, "The Best" is safe and neat in the line of family and inheritance. Although none of the three brothers in
have inherited their father's business to make barbecued pork , they are not even brothers (for the confusion of the blood relationship between the three, you can refer to Er Dongsheng Qin Pei Jiang David's three brothers) , but still more than ten I have been living in my father's barbecue shop every year, and I have lived a life where I can't see my head when I look down.
refused to separate from the beginning, and finally reconciled with the old concept, and realized that "home is where there is family", the big brother's obsession with "family" and the disintegration of his obsession can be traced in the film.
He is worried, shows loyalty, and values the unity of family members. Although he has a very strong machismo, he has a good face and loves to be brave, but in order to make the big family united and harmonious, he is also willing to sacrifice his face and lose his teeth. Swallow into the stomach.
The biggest comedic effect of this film comes from his character. In the film
, the second brother is dating the eldest brother's ex-girlfriend. In order to avoid embarrassment, the second brother wants to move out. But in order to keep the family together, the eldest brother said that he had already cut off his love for his ex-girlfriend and insisted on letting his ex-girlfriend move in and live with him.
Since then, around the girlfriend of Stephy Deng , the eldest brother and the second brother launched a series of secret rivalries, and the family almost collapsed.
It is not difficult to see that this structure is very similar to the classic comedy series "Happy Family". On the basis of the previous work, this film has added more concentrated dramatic conflict and richer thematic connotations, and uses food as a simile to correspond to the relationship between the characters in the film one by one.
It is necessary to confront and confront each other, to grow and grow, each character's heart knot is explained in the film, and the succession and transformation are also in line with the laws of commercial genre films. From the perspective of the play, the film has no major flaws, and it stands to reason that the film's quality will not be too bad.
But when you watch the movie, you can feel the discomfort everywhere.
If the reason for the inability to laugh is because of the dialect gap, then there are many narrative and sensational parts in the plot that cannot resonate with the audience, so language problems cannot be used to prevaricate.
's backward gender perspective is the real reason why it can't catch up.
02
Making contemporary romance films inevitably confronts the topic of gender awareness.
If love is likened to war, most of 's love in the classical period is a class war, and the closer to contemporary love, the more inclined it is to gender war or war with self.
On this point, Huang Zihua's TV drama "Men's Love" is accurate. Its English title is called War of the Genders ("Gender War").
English names are more honest than Chinese names. In fact, in this drama, men don't kiss women and don't love them, women don't look down on men's useless chai diaosi and don't seek to make progress, and men look down on women's domineering things that make them unfeminine.
It pinpointed the main contradiction between men and women in the new era, so everyone applauded.
Are there any romantic films with precise pulse in this era?
has it, and that is " Love Myth " released last year.
It is about middle-aged love, but the concept of love inside is very new.
Although the whole film unfolds from the perspective of men, it is actually about how three women challenge the traditional rules of male perspective step by step, form a strong interaction with them, and finally lead an old-school man to a new type of gender relationship in an uncontrollable way. s story.
A great screenwriter will truthfully write down his limitations even if he loves his characters. The cruelty of
to the characters is the kindness to the audience.
Obviously, the screenwriter and director of "Myth of Love" likes the hero, Lao Bai, but she never hesitates to use the character's mouth to make fun of Lao Bai's weaknesses, which makes Lao Bai's image plump and cute.
After watching "The Best", many viewers will subconsciously think of "Myth of Love". Because the two films rely heavily on texts when discussing gender topics, and the wonderful war of words between the two sexes also happens at the dinner table, the feature of "eating as a metaphor" is very significant.
Of course, the deeper similarity is that both involve a deeply hidden subtle change -
The decline of traditional masculinity has become irresistible in contemporary times, and a new gender order is being established, which is in the process of fission. Men and women must experience all kinds of embarrassment and discomfort in order to obtain a relatively complete phased consensus.
In "The Best", this is the essence of the mental shift that Big Brother goes through. Traditional masculinity, the so-called righteousness of the rivers and lakes, the so-called father and son inheritance, the so-called "women are like clothes, brothers are like brothers and sisters" have been completely out of touch in the contemporary society that pays more attention to personal values.
For modern families, the most important thing to get rid of is the concept of "Sacrificing the ego to achieve others". The reunion that the audience expects is that every family member can still develop a complete self when they are honest with each other.
So the eldest brother must face his true feelings, face his embarrassment and reluctance, admit that he can't forget his ex-girlfriend who has become a younger brother and sister, so that he can become a sincere person again, and only then can he be qualified to reunite his family and find love .
It is a pity that the screenwriter of "The Best" did not keenly capture the fission of the gender order in the new era.
"Best" still focuses on the difference in thinking between men and women when dealing with the emotional entanglement between the eldest brother and his ex-girlfriend. The reasons that led to the breakup in those days can be summed up as the fact that men are too eloquent and not good at expressing themselves, and women are too sensitive and emotional.
But you must know that the public opinion here has evolved to the point where the entire network is crusade against "plain men", and this very old-fashioned gender stereotype has long lost its market.
"Myth of Love" is cleverly handled. It has created several very active female characters, and their initiative is completely self-interested. This not only enhances the authenticity of the characters and finds a reasonable reason for the forced transformation of the male protagonist, but also coincides with the call of the times for a new gender order.
The Best is sluggish in this regard. It is entirely from a male perspective, focusing on the male war between the two brothers caused by "Gou Ersao".
This is certainly a tribute to the old-school Hong Kong-style Jianghu film. But you must know that the gender awareness of most Hong Kong-made Jianghu films is extremely backward. The so-called "gouer (righteous) sister-in-law" is just a fight between men for the ownership of women.
ostensibly for men to "love", but in fact to defend their control over possessions. Women are "robbed" or "abandoned" for the sake of brotherhood, and in the stories of males fighting for territory, they really don't have much to do with them other than to serve as Israeli servants or as good internal helpers.
now wants to shoot the story of "Second Sister-in-law" again, and must completely, thoroughly and relentlessly subvert this ancient male perspective in order to shoot new ideas.
But the creator of " loves " didn't dare to be so cruel. The ex-girlfriend played by
Stephy Tang was not given the corresponding subjective initiative at all. She is portrayed as an indecisive woman who, when she finds out that her love is unfinished, will only stage a bitter scene with her old lover, saying lines like "You are a man, you must make a decision."
Here, she or the screenwriter subconsciously ceded the identity of the breaker of the emotional deadlock to men again for granted.
But "Myth of Love" will clearly tell the audience that when men are hesitant to face the old and new order, it is often women who take a brave step forward to break the deadlock.
I don't dare to say who is superior or inferior, but it is self-evident who is closer to the pulse of the times.
03
Here is a little episode.
The heroine Mao Mao played by Zheng Yuling in "Men and Women's Love" was very popular as soon as it was broadcast. Many of her lines are now regarded by many audiences as a declaration of contemporary independent women.
But in an interview many years later, the screenwriter said that the prototype of Sister Mao Mao was his head female boss at TVB. The screenwriter called the TVB at that time "feminist supremacy" and suppressed himself everywhere. In order to vent his personal anger, he wrote a female image of Sister Mao Mao, who is extremely capable of work, but has a quirky and poisonous tongue.
Who knows that the woman he hates the most is so popular with the audience, although he is not at ease, but he has made a classic.
This example is too dark humor .
The things that male screenwriters do their best to ridicule are precisely what contemporary women like and need most.
For such a male screenwriter, if he wants to create a real flesh and blood female character that the audience likes, the first priority is -
must not like her.
Once he wants to pour his favorite elements into a female character, the portrayal of this female character is doomed to fail.
Obviously, the screenwriter of "The Best" gave the best things to his new girlfriend, Miaomiao.
So we see a perfect girlfriend with a devil's body, an angelic face, and a knight-errant heart.
She descended from the sky, with her unspoken admiration for her eldest brother, she shuttled among every family member, helping everyone untie their knots.
Although the screenwriter consciously added a paragraph about the self-awareness of the three younger siblings in the film, almost all the scenes surrounding Miaomiao reinforce her stereotype as an "Internet celebrity" , At the dinner table, he also made a heart-to-heart gesture. A scene where he inquired about his eldest brother's past love history with his third brother was abruptly performed in "Beauty Secret Service Torture Department".
This is probably the perfect new woman in the creator's mind, like an angel card perpetual motion machine , not only responsible for the mental health of family members, but also responsible for alleviating the sexual hunger of male family members. Using Miaomiao as a template to mass-produce a batch of AI girlfriends, it should be well received by the majority of otaku groups. With Meow Meow,It is equivalent to having a friend, a nanny, a teacher, and a psychiatrist at the same time.
But the most perfect thing about AI girlfriend is that her love for her master needs no reason. You only need to write such a sentence in her settings, "I am the object of your worship", and she will carry out the command of worshiping you without hesitation, love you, tolerate you, help you solve all your troubles, and will never ask back You say:
why do you love me?
And the most terrifying thing about this movie is that all the couples in the film can't stand this torture, but they still sit at a table as a family and have a reunion dinner.
Even, the third brother's girlfriend clearly felt that her love for the third brother had disappeared, but she still chose to go home for dinner at the end.
You ask why you go home for dinner?
AI Girlfriend doesn't need a reason.
Chinese people don't need a reason to eat reunion dinner.
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