Ten years ago, Shen Teng and Ma Li were little known; ten years later, the two met at the top: In the history of Chinese film, Shen Teng became the first actor to exceed a box office of 35 billion yuan, and Ma Li was the first actor to exceed a box office of 20 billion yuan. actress. The combination of "Shen Ma" is nothing less than a comedy nuclear bomb. In terms of their achievements, they are almost the uncrowned kings of the current comedy world.
Ma Lihe's "Catch a Baby" broke 1 billion yuan on her blog
However, in a piece of content posted by the famous director Lu Chuan after his account was suspected of being stolen, last week he singled out and criticized the duo's latest film "Catch a Baby", calling it "low quality and highly alkaline" "The film's dominance of the film market is a "tragedy for culture."
"Domination" means that the film's box office exceeded 1.5 billion in just 7 days after its release (including limited screenings). Maoyan predicts that the total box office will exceed 3.6 billion: the public chooses "Catch a Baby", chooses Shen Teng, Ma Li, and chooses to laugh. One game.
Of course, the public's choice does not mean that the film is perfect. The current Douban score of "Catch Baby" is 7.4, which is in the middle of Happy Twist's "Xihong City Trilogy".
"Catch Me" failed to win over all audiences, perhaps because it is only a "half" comedy (some spoilers below).
一
Happy Mahua likes to dream.
Nine years ago, "Charlotte Troubles" brought middle-aged diaosi men back to their youth and gained both fame and fortune; six years ago, "The Richest Man in Xihong City" made a down-and-out football player become rich overnight and spend money like water; today, "Catch a Baby" "The "dream" was replaced by the "nightmare" of parenting.
The nightmare creator comes from the wealthy father played by Shen Teng. Seeing that the eldest son is incompetent, the youngest son is a giant baby, and there is no one to inherit the huge business, he persuades his wife (played by Ma Li) to return to the ancestral home, hires a team, and spends a lot of money to build a succession plan: test his son with "poverty" in order to hope that he will succeed. Successfully become a talent.
adopts the usual narrative structure of films such as "The Truman Show": a false world created with great effort is discovered by the protagonist and the truth is finally exposed, making this film a wonderful structural comedy. All the actors do their own thing, and they can create laughter without being funny, being ugly, playing tricks, or throwing away baggage.
A typical scene is Jia Bing's guest appearance as a wealthy man. Seeing Shen Teng's family in ragged clothes and lacking water and electricity, he lamented, "How can you live like this if you have hands and feet?" Unexpectedly, the next second, Ma Li appeared and entertained him with Cuban cigars. Between her words and laughter, she made him look like a poor man.
A slap in the face, a reversal, a surprise, confusion, and an angry departure, all in one go, with plenty of laughter. In fact, the entire film is run in this way: children and uninformed people, every time they challenge the illusion of poverty, Shen Teng and Ma Li will be confused and exhausted, making the audience laugh.
On the premise that the comedy structure is solid, branches and branches are still needed to fill in the details. This involves the second feature of "Catch a Baby", which is to add an extraordinary layer of color to the ordinary "family parenting" film by mixing various types of elements.
It looks like a shabby room, but in fact, the closet hides a secret world, which leads directly to the underground. Inside, there is an education base like a war room; the neighborhood of the house, foreigners on the street, idlers, and even grandma are all potential teachers. The all-round, three-dimensional surveillance environment, as well as the staged and project-based training plan, are completely the lens language of spy films and spy films.
The grandma pretending to be paralyzed was discovered by her grandson and had to run on the street. The grandson chased her. This was a chase scene from a police movie. The child was suspected of being deceived and kidnapped by the bad guys, which was also a routine from a gangster movie or a suspense movie. Shen Teng and Ma Li walked out. The ancestral home, domineering on the street, sitting in a luxury car, and the demeanor of Chow Yun-fat's "God of Gamblers". When checking the children's simulated results, the action of squeezing the paper is exactly the same as playing cards in a gambling movie.
In addition, the supporting roles include almost all the outstanding comedians in "Xihong City Universe": the investment consultant of the richest man Wang Duoyu became the security guard of the film, the driver who brought Ma Dongmei back ten years ago is still the driver, and the three A pig and football coach Wei Xiang become an ideological and political teacher, the "big smart" who writes a story turns into a fishmonger, and Jia Bing and the loving mother Sarina from "The World" play grandma, etc. These are popular and iconic roles with the audience. As soon as it appears, it will awaken the audience's memory, creating a comedic "duet" effect.
Of course, the "icing on the cake" of "Catch a Baby" is still, and can only be, Shen Teng and Ma Li.
The "Shen Ma" group has gone from little-known in 2005 to now, topping the box office list for male and female protagonists respectively. Behind it is more than 20 years of comedy accumulation in dramas, sketches, variety shows, and movies. They have done it: every smile, every word and every action makes the audience want to laugh. This is an honor that countless comedians dream of.
The essence of comedy is to be funny. With the comedy ace "Shen Ma" team, a solid comedy story structure, supplemented by diverse genre elements and guest appearances by various laughing stars, "Catch Me" can be said to be the funniest comedy in recent years. It is a box office hit, and it should be in this way.
二
It’s funny as hell, but it still couldn’t stop some viewers from shouting “discomfort”. Because "Catch a Baby" is essentially a nightmare that many East Asian children can relate to: all happiness and jokes are based on the deception and denial of children.
Of course, high-end comedy always has a tragic core. Pointing out the absurdity and ridiculousness of the suppressive, hard-working, and mutually harmful education model is also a kind of elevation of intentions and a demonstration of value. But the problem with "Catch a Baby" is that the expression of its tragic core is incomplete, suspended, and even slippery.
First, education issues involve two places, one is the family and the other is the school. The two are of equal weight, no distinction is made.
The film focuses on the family, and tailors the learning plan through the parents of "Shen Ma" and an agent-level coaching team. Learning English, doing math, and reading extracurricular books all happen around the family. As for school life, it is not mentioned at all; the influence of teachers is not mentioned at all.
It’s not that the school is not well designed. Shen Teng can spend money to build the school, hire a principal, hire gold medal teachers, and escort them all the way, so that the children can have both good character and academic performance. But there is no similar design at all. At this level, it is not as real and profound as Huang Bo's "School Dad", which broke his head over the issue of his children's schooling.
Second, internal problems within the family.
The Ma family has two sons. The eldest son was "wasted" because he was rich and raised. The film's explanation of him is too careless, and most of the time he is just a reference for the young son, a joke maker and a poor tool man. The lack of words to explain his growth, frustration and awakening means that Shen Teng's original determination to raise his young son in poverty was insufficient, which ultimately weakened his reflection on educational issues.
Third, the issue of character growth.
The first 2/3 of the film is the story of primary school student Ma Jiye; by the end, Ma Jiye directly becomes a senior high school student, missing seven or eight years of growth experience, making the character's awakening abrupt and deliberate. The main creator can use the time of a song (just like the "game time" of Wang Duoyu's love in "The Richest Man in Xihong City") to let the character grow year by year and discover various clues. By the third year of high school, he finally couldn't help but speak out.
The fourth, and also the biggest problem of "Catch a Baby", is the handling of the ending.
Ma Jiye discovered the "scam", gave up the college entrance examination, and exposed the adult mask, "Which teacher are you, there is no introduction to you two on the wall" - he thought that even his biological parents were fake. This line is the best in the entire film, and it has a strong sense of Nezha's denunciation of narcissistic, hypocritical, and decadent patriarchy like "eviscerating the bones to return to the father, and cutting the flesh to return to the mother."
Shen Teng made a speech, struggled and suffered, wanted to apologize but was unable to speak. Facing his son's determined back, what he finally shouted was: "Are you still going home for dinner tonight?"
After that, the whole family seemed to have "reconciled." , my son was not injured at all, he resumed his studies and was admitted to college. His parents cared about him, his brother supported him, and he was peaceful. Shen Teng and Ma Li joked that they might as well "have another baby".
There is family reunion, self-awareness, and playful smiles, but there is no harm or reflection on the harm. This forced "reconciliation" weakens Ma Jiye's tragedy and weakens the criticism of Shen Teng-style parents, making the story only fall on the surface of comedy, while the huge monster on the bottom of the sea is still hiding in the dark.
Of course, comedy is not a scalpel to remove sores, and "Catch a Baby" is not intended to "educate" the audience. It's just that it has some shortcomings in the creation of characters, the handling of plots, and the expression of issues. It avoids the important and ignores the light. As a result, some viewers laugh while carrying a psychological burden. In moments of contemplation, the weight of thinking is relieved by laughter. , ultimately only becomes a "half" comedy.
三
In fact, the missing and suspended aspects of "Catch a Baby" can be completely filled by Stephen Chow's movies.
For example, in "Yangtze River No. 7", Stephen Chow plays a poor worker father who moves bricks, lives in a shack, and collects garbage. In order to let his son Xiao Di become a talent, he insists on attending an aristocratic school. Stephen Chow was poor because he was sunburnt and worked hard to move bricks, causing him to fall from the building; Shen Teng was pretending to be poor because he was wearing a pair of bad shoes and driving a donkey cart out. The latter is somewhat perfunctory.
"Yangtze River No. 7" stills
"Yangtze River No. 7" focuses on educational issues, both at home and in school. The most important thing is that, like most of Stephen Chow's comedies, it focuses on small people who are not seen, and writes about their struggles, losses, pain, resistance and redemption. Stephen Chow is using a kind of fairy tale innocence to fight against the corruption and evil of the world.
In "Xihong City Trilogy", Charlotte is a frustrated music lover who is poor and struggling to survive; Wang Duoyu is a former goalkeeper who was fired and lives in a dilapidated house. Suddenly, Charlotte traveled through time, cheated with her memories, and became a big star; Wang Duoyu made a fortune from heaven and became the designated heir to a billionaire. For them, comedy means that when they are poor, they long for wealth; when they are rich, their conscience is still intact; they have a big dream and return to their families. There is no fairy tale color, only the translation and processing of the wishes of men and women in the world. The same is true for the imagination and depiction of rich and poor in "Catch a Baby".
Top: "Charlotte Troubles"; Bottom: "The Richest Man in Xihong City"
In essence, Stephen Chow is anti-secular, while Happy Twist caters to the world.
Furthermore, Stephen Chow's comedies often have a sense of compassion.
In "Shaolin Soccer", the shoe store manager felt that the poor people's eyes had dirty the glass of the store, so he wiped it with his breath; in "The God of Cookery", Stephen Chow fell to the bottom and slept in the gutter, and suddenly a bowl of barbecued pork rice was served in front of him; "The King of Comedy" In "Kung Fu", Yin Tianqiu clings to the script with his fingernails and clings to the script and the heartbreaking "I support you"; in "Kung Fu", Ah Xing laughs desperately after robbing the mute girl. It is a deafening, ideal-shattering self-deprecation, and a head-pounding Ah Xing, who was behind the floor, tried his best to pick up a piece of wood and knock the bald head of Fire Cloud Evil God; such details can be found everywhere in Stephen Chow's comedies.
Collection of Stephen Chow movie stills
Feeling sorry for the suffering of the poor, pitying the misfortune of the world, lamenting the sourness of love, and cherishing the blessings of the world. This is where Stephen Chow's comedies (not all of his works) are deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. For this reason, he is well-deserved "The King of Comedy".
As for the "Xihong City" series, perhaps the biggest regret is that they can comically mock the world and express certain observations and thoughts, but they cannot achieve the compassion achieved in works such as "Kung Fu" and "The King of Comedy".
Although Shen Teng and Ma Li are respected as the "Kings of Comedy" in terms of box office performance, they may still be short of a more perfect work before they can become the real and widely recognized "Kings of Comedy".
Text/Li Ruifeng Editor Li Jie
