"Still Think You Are the Best" (also known as "Food Drama Attack") has achieved a box office record of 107 million yuan since its release in the Mainland on September 9, 2022. At the same time, its local box office in Hong Kong exceeded 76 million (data as of November 26, 2022), becoming the first Hong Kong-produced comedy in Hong Kong to exceed 70 million. Hong Kong Film History Comedy Champion.
This film is director Chen Yongshen's second feature film after "Uncle Against the Current" (2018), which focuses on middle-aged men. The whole film is happy, funny, warm and healing. It is a typical Hong Kong-style romantic comedy. Through the emotional entanglement between the three brothers, it tells about the changes of the whole family and the personal growth of the three brothers. The eldest brother's old lover Monica became the second brother's girlfriend, and the eldest brother accepted the pursuit of the new girl because of his frustrated self-esteem. The third brother and his girlfriend Zhu Zhu have been in a long-distance running relationship for many years, and they are also facing a relationship crisis. Three couples, four romances, six people fighting wits and courage at the dinner table, full of dramatic tension.
The film takes the dinner as the core of a dramatic conflict in its creation. Contradictions appear in family dinners, and the resolution of conflicts is also the same. The fireworks of the film make people intoxicated. Under the same roof, the situation and choices of the three brothers make people feel emotional and sympathetic. By showing everyone's different personalities, identities, and subtle relationships between characters, the film presents family and love in multiple dimensions, which is simple and interesting. On the whole, this film is the transformation of starring Huang Zihua as a stand-up comedian. Apart from laughing and cursing, it makes a microscopic perspective on the emotional psychology of middle-aged men and women. The empathy of family and love has given birth to the film's high reputation and rising box office results.
A transformational work of a stand-up comedian
Dayo Wong has been famous for more than 30 years. He is the founder of "Stand-Up Comedy" in Hong Kong, China. He is the "God of Comedy" in the minds of many people. , Conveying a positive attitude towards life while laughing and cursing. Huang Zihua has always presented in exaggerated and crazy performances. For example, "Agent of Standing" (2018) and "The Grandmaster" (2020) starring him are his typical works. Among them, "Standard Agent" is a movie that reconstructs Hong Kong's nonsensical comedy. It uses parody, ridicule, satire, exaggeration and other expression techniques to show extremely Hong Kong-style "intensive jokes". Famous Hong Kong stars, playing roles familiar to the audience in the past, recreating the bridges in classic movies, presenting the audience with a Hong Kong-style carnival spectacle. Huang Zihua's performance in the film is also consistent with his previous "dudong laugh" style, showing the characteristics of being funny, funny and nonsensical. Huang Zihua continued the performance style of "Standard Agent" in "The Grandmaster", expressing the absurdity and nonsense in the story to the extreme. The film is on its own, with a unique comedic beat, and Dayo Wong's performance matches the looseness of the story and complements the nonsensical gags.
And in "I Still Think You Are the Best", Huang Zihua contributed his heartfelt acting skills, rarely showing a mature, calm, long-term and even weak side. The performance is relaxed and restrained, which can be said to be his transformation. He expressed the "flowers don't seem to bloom, but love gradually becomes like the sea" in his inner world through body language, which is deeply touching. At the same time, this film is also the first film starring Huang Zihua to be released in the mainland, and it has also gained a large number of fans among mainland audiences.
Middle-aged men and women see each other
"I still think you are the best" has a relatively "modern" feature, which creates three pairs of men and women with completely different personalities. The three men in the play respectively interpret the things that men have to face at different stages of life, and the three girls are in a sense the opposite of these three men, using a mirror-like life attitude to see each other.
Monica, as the core of the contradiction between the eldest brother and the second brother, is the eye of the whole movie. Her job is to protect cultural relics, and she is still studying for a Ph.D. in her spare time.Beautiful, is the ideal partner in the hearts of middle-aged men. The two brothers' pursuit of him also reflects their psychological activities and life choices. The emotional relationship between the three is also a mirror image of their individual growth.
Miaomiao is almost the perfect image of a girlfriend in a man's heart. She is beautiful, intelligent, and knows how to advance and retreat. After only a short contact with her elder brother, she learned about his eye problems and gave her glasses carefully. She understands her elder brother's psychological activities and chooses to quit at the right time. Even when the conflict between the three brothers intensified, she was the one who tried to resolve the conflict.
The third brother's girlfriend, Zhu Zhu, has been taking care of the third brother's life for many years, doing her best, but when the third brother proposes to her after winning the e-sports competition, she bravely refuses the other party. She realizes that her cooking skills are also worth being appreciated by more people, and she can live well without her boyfriend. This way of handling is commendable. The audience will feel that Zhuzhu has won his own subjectivity, bravely and independently recognize emotional relationships and self-growth. At the same time, the third brother also began to reflect on his emotions.
The modern version of "Happy Events at Home"
The theme of this movie is "home", which is the focus of the narrative that arouses empathy from the audience. And this kind of romantic comedy that takes place in a family scene has long been presented in Hong Kong comedy movies, such as "Happy Family" (1992) and its sequels thirty years ago, all about three brothers with very different personalities in the family Emotional, career and other contradictions encountered in reality. Through the parody of classic movie clips, exaggerated and funny performances, and the irony and ridicule alluding to real life, the film shows a background full of kindness and warmth.
In this sense, "I Still Think You Are the Best" is a modern version of "Happy Events at Home", with both joyful and funny scenes, as well as delicate and touching emotions. The plots of comedy are connected in series to solve emotional problems and realize self-growth during the narrative process of the story.
is slightly different from the previous ones. First of all, the modern version of the character design, a perfect woman like Miao Miao looks like a character in a comic, so perfect that it is a bit unreal. Secondly, the story ending of "I Still Think You Are the Best" is not a happy ending, but an open ending. This seems more rational, and adds realistic reflection, which improves the ideological nature of the film and leaves more thinking for the audience.
The song "I still think you are the best" is a song released by Jacky Cheung in 1993. It expresses the emotions of the old love and the unbreakable love. This is a portrayal of the emotional dilemma of the three brothers in the film. This old song appears several times in the film, which not only expresses the inner activities of the characters in the play, but also serves as a key to unlock the nostalgic emotions of the audience.
This film captures the life of ordinary people in Hong Kong, and projects the situation of middle-aged men and women. In the development of Hong Kong comedy movies, romantic comedy is one of the important subgenres. In the post-epidemic era, it is a relatively good choice for Hong Kong movies to return to the local classic genre.
"I Still Think You Are the Best" is a Hong Kong-style comedy that has been rarely seen in recent years. It replaces the classic genre of Hong Kong and replaces the main object of the film with the aura of the classic genre that the audience is familiar with. Projected into the past obsessed era or plot, to find the residual warmth of the confidence and superiority of Hong Kong movies, so as to obtain many emotions such as gratitude, nostalgia and reminiscence, and awaken the psychological identity of the audience. (Author: Kang Ning, Associate Researcher, Department of Film Studies, Beijing Film Academy)
