"I'm your mother, I don't care who cares about you?"
"Mom, I am already an adult, and I don't need you to take care of everything."
A simple conversation expresses the voice of most parents and their children Helpless.
On the first day of this year's New Year, as one of Xu Zheng's "囧 series" comedy, "囧Mom", was screened on the whole internet APP of ByteDance.
Xu Zheng, as China's top comedy director, has always been loved by everyone for his funny plot and superb dialogue.
But in "囧Mom", instead of the simple and humorous themes of the past, it tells a family story with laughter and tears. The story of
mainly tells the divorce between Xu Yiwan (Xu Zheng) and Zhang Lu (Yuan Quan), arguing over the intellectual property rights of enterprise products. In order to disrupt Huang Zhang Lu's business, Xu Yiwan is going to the United States to confront Zhang Lu.
However, under the wrong circumstances, he got on the train from Beijing to Moscow by his mother Lu Xiaohua (played by Huang Meiying).
The family entanglement between Xu Yiwan and his mother along the way, the battle of wits and courage with Zhang Lu, and the three clues to accompany his mother to realize the dream of the Red Star Theater are intertwined, which together constitute the whole picture of the movie.
, as a comedy of the "囧 series", "囧 Mom" inherited the narrative style of the past films such as "People on the Road" and "Thai 囧", using multiple short stories as the carrier to slowly speak to the audience; Shang Xu Zheng's own word-of-mouth influence is a film that meets the lower limit of the story.
However, since its release, the Douban score has only been 5.9. What is going on?
One, anticlimactic, the audience
alone, from the plot point of view, "囧Mom" is fair, but it is only a fair level.
started when Xu Yiwan just got on the train and didn't want to take care of his mother, until finally the contradiction between the mother and child was resolved, the story and the inheritance and transformation were all there. If
is used as a piece of time to pass the Spring Festival, it is naturally possible; but if it is to be carefully examined, there are many unreasonable points.
In the first thirty minutes of the film, the serial plot and the humorous and interesting plot made people continue to laugh:
Xu Yiwan, in order to prevent his wife from obtaining orders from the United States, remotely controlled his cousin to sabotage secretly, but stealing chickens did not cause the loss. Not only did he get into the wrong car, his cousin was almost taken to prison;
was fraught with business wars, while playing perfunctory care of his mother, like people in their 30s and 40s.
But since thirty minutes later, this experience has become less and less, even a little confused. And the beginning of the change was when Xu Yiwan met Natasha from the train.
Natasha is a Russian girl. After hearing that her boyfriend had cheated on her, she was in a period of disappointment. She and Xu Yiwan confided in her past and threatened to have a new start.
When Natasha entered the audience's attention, many people thought she was an important promoter of the plot, and the two seemingly similar experiences seemed to herald the development of a new relationship.
But the plot seems to be making a huge joke with us. After arriving at the station, Natasha got off the car and saw her ex-boyfriend. The two miraculously reconciled in a few words? It is really puzzling.
In the following plot, Xu Yiwan was trapped outside the car at the rear of the train, and almost fell out because of climbing on the roof of the train. It wasn't until the train entered the station the next day that he entered the compartment, which triggered a quarrel with his mother and started a new plot.
From Natasha's departure to Xu Yiwan's conflict with her mother, this episode seemed very abrupt; although Xu Zheng performed funny, but in terms of the overall story, it was a break. The
mechanical short story ending has no other effect except to guide the plot, and it even makes people feel that the previous preparation is a waste of time. In addition to the obvious flaws in the scene transition,
also has some problems in the internal logic of each story. The most typical scene is the scene where Xu Yiwan is carrying his mother Lu Xiaohua on his back and catching a train on the ice.
The endless glacier, the blue sky, the thick Soviet-style railway station in the distance, coupled with the superb photography, are easily fascinating.
But just as we were sorry for the mother and son not being able to catch the train, Xu Yiwan said "we can fly over"It's really confusing.
Where does the hot air balloon come from? ! The entire plot in front was not at all foreshadowing. A group of hot air balloons flew for no reason, and there were people who were willing to fly the mother and daughter backwards. At the last glance, it turned out to be a hardcore APP advertisement.
2. Love and family, intertwined contradictions
"囧Mom" does not have many characters. In just two hours, the character creation can be said to be mixed.
On the one hand, the two protagonists, the mother and son, carry the core of the story. In the thousands of Chinese family relationships, they have seen almost everyone's shadow.
On the other hand, other characters as supporting roles have a slight meaning of "tool man".
Xu Yiwan, this middle-aged small boss, has become exhausted after experiencing the double blow of his family and career.
He looks like we are always rebellious in front of our parents, and we are not grown up: tired of the care of his mother.
"Hate that his mother kept stuffing him to eat when he was on the phone, and disliked his mother's irritability of snoring and kicking while sleeping, and even reluctant to take tourist photos with his mother, keeping ten meters away."
Lu Xiaohua, a typical Chinese Parents. As a mother, I strictly control Xu Yiwan’s life:
thinks that three to five in the afternoon is the best time to go to the bathroom, so he forcibly pours Iwan a lot of water;
thinks that playing too much with the mobile phone will cause dementia. Prevent Ivan from touching his mobile phone, whether it is work or life;
even called Zhang Lu without Xu Yiwan's knowledge, interfering with the couple's life at will;
...
conflicts like this Bit by bit accumulated, quarrels, helplessness, compromise, cold war, hurt our parents, but also hurt ourselves.
And the root of these contradictions comes from the Chinese-style family education of "parents are strong and children are weak" for thousands of years.
Parents are always right. As children, they must obey their parents; when they are young, it is called "there is a hard-to-read scripture in every family". Set of feudal remnants of hierarchical concepts.
Therefore, the biggest obstacle preventing young people from communicating, communicating and even expressing love with their parents is not the so-called "generation gap", but the desire to control.
After understanding this kind of relationship, let's look at the emotional entanglement between mother and child, and it becomes very easy to understand.
Lu Xiaohua, an old lady born in the 1950s, was deeply influenced by that era:
likes Soviet culture, is afraid of loneliness, and pursues collectivist values, so she would rather take the risk of being deceived and be willing to be with herself The old sisters of Xuzhou went to the Red Star Theater in Moscow to realize their dreams; therefore, at the beginning of the film, she would seem stubborn to ask Xu Yiwan to accompany her on the train.
Of course, because of the strong parents and weak children's family values, Lu Xiaohua will desperately pounce on the brown bears in the bear-infested scene, hoping to win a chance for her son.
At this moment, the brilliance of maternal love overcomes the instinct of fear. Xu Zheng took no time to show the greatness of traditional Chinese mothers, completed the double shaping of the contradiction of Lu Xiaohua, the protagonist, and achieved the sublimation of the characters.
The role of Zhang Lu, although not many times in the film, is a mirror of the protagonist Xu Yiwan.
Because only through her, we can understand the true thoughts of Xu Yiwan's heart, and also through her mouth, can we further promote the plot.
"You have a imaginary wife in your heart. What she should like, what she hates, and how to talk, you have all set." The brief dialogue at the beginning of the film pointed out the key to the marriage problem of the two.
After this, every change in Xu Yiwan's inner feelings was expressed in the communication with Zhang Lu through text messages or phone calls. Although the characters of
are not perfect, they fulfill their mission with due diligence. The next few main characters of
, one is Natasha (Decorated by Ou Liya), the other is the conductor (Jia Bing), their playing time is not small, but they did not achieve the desired film and television effect.
Natasha, who was supposed to have a turning effect, seemed to have never appeared after the cut, and disappeared.
Xu Yiwan was facing a double blow at the time, and he needed an existence that could help him regain his spirit: the same broken love, the same depression, Natasha was very in line with the personification of "the same person who fell from the world", and the two should join hands. Difficulty.
But unfortunately, the plot did not develop in this direction. The most intuitive performance is in the scene where the ring was thrown at the rear of the car. Xu Yiwan struggled for a long time, but gave up throwing away the ring, so in his heart, he still couldn't let go of Zhang Lu. .
Then Natasha left. If you spend a lot of pens on Natasha, it is just to reflect the simple effect of Xu Yiwan's pain and entanglement, which is not worth it.
As for the conductor, when the film was screened, he thought he was a character like Wang Baoqiang in "People on the Journey" and "Thailand", who played the role of "holding up" and can be used as a foreshadowing throughout the comedy.
can see in the end but found that the conductor is just a purely responsible and funny character.
However, if you need a comedy effect, why not create more characters and create a happy atmosphere, but just gather the plot in such a deep conductor?
3. Commercial operation, embarrassing situation
"囧Mom" under the name of a comedy, is actually a story about family concepts, love and affection.
Because of too much control, the relationship between mother and son has become very poor, because they do not understand, the husband and wife are strangers.
is also because of love. Mothers who are over sixties can keep their sons from being attacked by hungry bears. It is also because of love. Couples who are strangers have left the last thread for each.
After all, love is not control and demand, love is acceptance and respect. The idea of
is very beautiful, and the depth is not small; however, the biggest problem with the low score of "囧Mom" is the use of the wrong form to express the subject matter.
This is a "囧 series" film. Its original tone is street fast food culture. It is a way of entertainment for young people holding popcorn, watching and laughing in the theater to pass the time.
But, what do we see in "囧Mom"? It is a thought-provoking story and a realistic experience that requires careful taste.
In other words, under the coat of a comedy film is the inside of a literary film. The huge difference between the outside and the inside has given the audience wrong psychological expectations. This is the essence of the problem.
As we all know, literary and comedy films are two completely different types of films with different features or even opposites. The two cannot have both. If
must be combined, the final form can only be painted tigers not like anti-dogs. Both the plot and the pain points of the characters mentioned above are concrete manifestations of this contradiction.
Generally speaking, "囧 Mom" is a fairly qualified transformation attempt by director Xu Zheng, at least maintaining his personal reputation and the general style of the "囧 series" movies. As a commercial operation film, Douban gave "囧 Mom" a hit. A score of 5.9 is a very reasonable score. However, because of commercialization, Xu Zheng tried his best to maintain a balance between audience and connotation, which invisibly put a shackle on his creation.
But I believe that if Xu Zheng is willing to settle down and make a literary film he likes, it will be very beautiful.
4. "囧Mom" is free to watch, is it good or bad?
After talking about the film itself, we turned our attention to the outside, which is the announcement of "囧Mom". When
was first officially announced, it was scheduled to be released on the first day of the Lunar New Year. It was presented to the audience as a Spring Festival movie. Later, Xu Zheng started to file the movie until the 30th, which caused a lot of controversy.
Due to the Wuhan epidemic, all Spring Festival movies have been withdrawn for safety reasons. However, NetBoom Huanxi Media sold the copyright of "囧Mo" to ByteDance for a price of 630 million yuan. After investigation, it was found to be true, which caused an uproar on the Internet for a while.
Douyin, Toutiao and other platforms are free to premiere. It is indeed a good news for the audience in special times. It not only saves movie ticket money, but also helps people pass the boring time at home.
As a consumer, facing the outbreak of the epidemic, Toutiao gave everyone such a great gift for free. Whether it is reasonable or reasonable, we should thank the Bytedance company for its efforts.
through the strong alliance with Huanxi Media, Achieving a win-win situation for the producer, distributor and audience. Especially Xu Zheng, selling such a film at a price of 630 million yuan, which cost only about 200 million yuan, can be described as a lot of money.
Kehuanxi Media has also made a "bad head" in the film industry. The first thing to know is that China’s annual movie box office is only over 60 billion, and the scale of the industry is very small. This is a weak industry, but some people still do not abide by the industry rules and earn profits by taking shortcuts.
Secondly, in the long run, once the online APP is opened to show movies, it will undoubtedly find a way out for filmmakers-"Even if they are shoddy, they can lie down and earn money in another way."
Without the box office and word-of-mouth fight of the cinema chain, can China's film and television industry have a long way to go?
finally had a "Wandering Earth" last year, which set the precedent for China's industrialized film production. Is it now even better to go back to the original point?
Any disruptive activity on an industry is nothing more than two aspects-external innovation and internal destruction.
Jack Ma’s Alibaba disrupted the retail industry, changed the living habits of millions of Chinese people, and helped thousands of small businesses go further. This is innovation and a manifestation of productivity improvement.
And the joy of the media’s move, it only unilaterally undermined the industry’s rules and grabbed benefits, which would have no effect on the progress of the industry itself, or even regress.
may be successful this time, but maybe not so lucky next time. After all, in addition to personal struggle, success must also consider the course of history.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-