Never expected that the biggest "joke" of the 2024 summer season would come from the filmmakers rather than the movie itself.
Netizens discovered that director Lu Chuan publicly complained about Mahua's new film " Catch the Baby " on social platforms.
The content is very sharp:
"It is a tragedy for the culture that Mahua's low-quality and highly alkaline comedy films dominate the Chinese film market."
’s venomous and straightforward remarks shocked many netizens.
So everyone started digging deeper and found that Lu Chuan had a close relationship with Happy Twist. His first theatrical movie " Nine-Storey Demon Tower " was released at the same time as " Charlotte's Sorrow ", and the two movies were well-received. A world of difference.
This is very subtle. After
public opinion fermented, Lu Chuan's team issued an article saying that the content of stolen accounts was untrue. Lu Chuan himself also came forward to emphasize that he and Shen Teng are good friends.
Netizen: Is this public relations method too old?
The scene has come. In response to the theft of Lu Chuan’s account, the platform also issued an investigation statement, stating that “the content was deleted by the user himself” and “the mobile device used to post and delete posts is consistent.”
Whether it was the director who switched on the wrong account out of passion and resorted to stupid public relations tactics in desperation, or whether the account thief was too clever and "blinded" the platform detection, everyone has a different opinion.
Chapter 7 Today, I would like to talk about "Fake Lu Chuan"'s complaints about "Catch a Baby". Is this movie really that bad? Has it reached the point of " low quality and highly alkaline "?
Objectively speaking, although Happy Twist is popular, it has indeed produced hilariously bad movies and "garbage" that the entire Internet complained about, but Shen Teng and Ma Li 's "Catch a Baby" obviously does not belong to this category.
It is not only a comedy that retains the high-level funny effect of Happy Twist, but it is also a work that does a very good job of comedy, satire and tragedy. Its core is even close to the level of a "horror film". Netizens who have watched
also have an incisive summary: Chinese horror .
Regardless of the subject matter, entry point, and core concept, almost all the movies have something that can resonate with East Asian children. After being treated in a comedic way, it made me laugh when I first watched it, and when I watched it again, I felt empathy and my scalp went numb when I thought about it.
I won’t talk about comedy here for now. I can only say that Shen Teng and Ma Li play comedy together, and of course they get full marks.
Let’s mainly talk about the details with “Chinese horror” in “Catch a Baby”. Some places make you laugh when you look at them, and cry when you taste them. Some places are really scary.
( Note: The following contains spoilers, netizens who have not yet watched the movie should be careful to choose )
Some people say that life is a huge "Truman Show". Ma Jiye, the youngest son of the hero and heroine in the movie, is a photo of The Truman Show. Entering reality, when he had incomplete memory when he was young, he became the arranged "Truman".
His wealthy father Ma Chenggang (Shen Teng) believes that being wealthy is the bane of his son's inability to become successful. If his son can taste the pain of a poor life like he did when he was a child, he can grow into an outstanding successor to capital.
So, Ma Chenggang persuaded his wife Chunlan (played by Ma Li) to bring Ma Jiye back to the broken house where he lived when he was a child to raise him, and assembled an education team of hundreds of people to tailor a "script" for his son's growth.
is so generous that ordinary people cannot imagine it, so some netizens jokingly call it a parenting game for rich people. But there is one detail that I believe many people can resonate with. In The Truman World, Truman is "transparent".
"Monitoring"
Ma Jiye's every word and deed was monitored. Even when he went to the toilet, he was closely monitored. The diary was regarded as a personal privacy, and another door was dug out behind the cabinet.
My parents respect and support me on the surface, but actually check it out every day.
As for these behaviors, under the painstaking reasons of "for your own good" and "to make the children grow up," no one realized that there was a problem, even though they knew that they could only "peep".
Father's Shoes
In order to educate Ma Jiye to be filial and caring for his father, Ma Chenggang deliberately gave "all the money" in the family to Ma Jiye for safekeeping, hoping that Xiaoma would use it sparingly and save just enough money to buy a new pair of shoes for his old father. .
Ma Jiye, who grew up in a life of extreme lack of material resources, naturally longed for the life his classmates had, and suddenly had the ability to control such a large amount of wealth. He suddenly had the idea to take advantage of the rules and buy a tablet to experience the game.
The son did not buy shoes for his father, and Ma Chenggang broke his defense instantly.
Ma Chenggang panicked when his son secretly spent money on game consoles.
This kid is going to be ruined!
So, the old father soaked the tablet overnight, causing his son's small mistake to turn into a big one, and the whole family's property was wiped out. Grandma used "life" to teach Ma Jiye that "people cannot stand without faith", and the whole family suffered misery, which made Ma Jiye feel guilty.
With the self-blame and fear of "almost killing his grandma", "ignoring his father's hardships" and "losing the whole family's money", Ma Jiye forced his classmates to laugh at him for picking up rags and selling them for money. The fear of money poverty and unfilial piety was deeply buried in his heart.
I saw with my own eyes a young boy living in insecurity and guilt. He was bullied by his friends because of his poverty. However, the old father was only "happy" to get new shoes, without any thought of what kind of shadow it would leave on the child. .
Compared with the experience brought by hardship, many parents seem to be more obsessed with the charm of "hardship education". If a child does not become more filial, sensible, and hard-working because of hardship, it must be because he has not suffered enough...
About Self-Esteem
There is a scene in the movie that is the most touching in Chapter 7, because I have seen it too many times in reality. After years of poor education and extreme circumstances, Ma Jiye developed the habit of taking advantage of loopholes to save money.
In order to save money, he took his mother and grandmother to eat the snacks provided while waiting in line at a hot pot restaurant.
This behavior attracted the attention of other customers, and also embarrassed the educator grandmother who helped Ma Chenggang plan the hard education and the mother who agreed to the hard education. The two adults couldn't bear the strange looks and ran away.
You see, adults know better than anyone how embarrassing it is to have a bruised self-esteem.
But it is precisely this group of adults who make children have to give up their self-esteem and run for money. Their self-esteem is extremely important, and it is the child's turn to have self-esteem... What kind of self-esteem do children need?
This reminded Qihua of a parent she once met in a tourist area. She hid the product in her child's bag and tried to buy it for free. When the store manager discovered it, she followed the store manager to teach her child: How can you steal things? !
Anesthesia and Death
In order to make his son give up his career as a sports student, Ma Chenggang applied anesthesia to his son's calf. The boy who was happy one day that he could use his special skills to bring his family out of poverty was faced with the despair of having his plan shattered the next day.
This detail has two levels of horror.
The first layer is to achieve the goal, the father can harm the child's body without hesitation; the second layer is that before applying it to Ma Jiye, Ma Chenggang even tested the efficacy of the drug on himself.
One of the horrors of Chinese education is that you are in pain, but what is even more painful is that you cannot suffer, because all pain comes from "love". Parents will hurt your body for love, and they will also hurt themselves.
When the fake grandma in the film accidentally faced the risk of joining the gang, Ma Chenggang made a prompt decision to let the grandma "die". When the young man was suffering from the death of a relative who had been with him since childhood, everyone was watching his pain.
The death and separation of loved ones faced by children seems to be nothing in their eyes. Because "the future will make up for it," Ma Chenggang even feels that making up for it in the future will bring greater happiness to his children. Is
familiar? Many parents often do not take into account the immediate pain of their children. They can easily break the contract, separate, or even conceal the death of a loved one "for the sake of their children" without feeling any problem.
Because... it's for the good of the children, and also because they think they can make up for it in the future.What is there in the future of that can make up for the sorrow left in the growth period? Adults actually know that the regrets of youth cannot be made up for.
"Waste" eldest son
Before Ma Jiye, Ma Chenggang also had a son, Ma Dajun. For the education of this son, Ma Chenggang obviously adopted the money-spending education of rich people, including luxury and wealth, studying abroad, and spending money on education.
The result...raised a "trash" in the eyes of his father.
Then, Ma Jiye, who was raised in poverty, appeared.
Is there the feeling that many people often talk about, "When you lose your big size, you need to practice another one"? At the end of the movie, the old father wants to reward his son with a younger brother and sister, which is the last hilarious point of the movie.
And this hilarious point also takes the horror of parenting like game training to the extreme.
The "Rebel" Marathon
When Ma Jiye used the method of giving up the college entrance examination to reveal the truth about Truman, when Ma Jiye returned to the road of sports student and embarked on the long-distance running track, I believe many viewers felt that the young man escaped from the prison and ran towards the sunshine. Already?
but pay attention to two details.
First of all, the only person cheering for him at the game was his brother, who had almost never gotten along with him after being separated. However, his old father continued to complain about his son in front of the TV, just as he despised his eldest son. Suppress.
Secondly, in the middle of the game, Ma Jiye suddenly went to pick up the bottle excitedly. In order to pick up the bottle, he almost gave up the game. In the eyes of his parents, this behavior was just a joke left by his childhood and brought them laughter.
If you think about it carefully, you will find the hidden ending of this story.
Ma Jiye may have had psychological problems for a long time.
pulls the timeline back to the period when Xiao Ma Jiye hopes to become a sports student. You will find that he wants to become a sports student not because he likes long-distance running, but... sports students are provided with food and housing. This is how he can think of taking his family away from home. The road of poverty.
It is not so much his regret that he cannot become a sports student, but rather that he regrets that he once missed the way to change his destiny. If he really loved sports, he would not have given up his grades in the middle of the game to pick up bottles.
reasonably speculates that Ma Jiye actually had psychological problems at this time.
Many details in the second half of the movie actually hint at Ma Jiye's psychological problems. I believe attentive viewers have discovered that a ridiculous experiment and the people who were destroyed seem to be just a joke.
Until the end of the movie, neither Ma's parents said "I'm sorry" to their son because of the deception. Until the end of the movie, Ma Jiye was still persistently picking up the "bottle" from his childhood. Until the end of the movie, this is a comedy.
