Recently, two comedy movies have inevitably been compared - the romantic comedy "If You Are the One 3" has still not exceeded 100 million at the box office after nine days of release, and Douban 6.0 means that Feng Xiaogang, the creator of the Lunar New Year stalls, failed to land in the Lunar New Year stalls; The workplace comedy "The Annual Meeting Can't Stop!" competes in the same field! " has exceeded 1 billion. The workplace topics brought by the movie have swept the screen. Douban reversed the rise to 8.2, becoming a proper "dark horse". This battle is so clear that it is not only the battle between veteran directors and young directors that makes people think deeply, but also what kind of comedy we need at the moment.
From the market point of view, on the one hand, comedy has always been in urgent need. Comedy movies always attract high attention, and various types of film and television dramas, and even stage dramas, are trying to incorporate some comedy elements in every corner. Provide temporary relief to the audience's emotions. On the other hand, various research reports show that the current "portraits" of theater movie audiences are mainly young people. According to the "2023 China Film Market Annual Inventory Report", young audiences under the age of 29 account for more than half, and the post-00s generation is Become the main force in the movie audience market.
The audience has iterated, and the "laughing points" have naturally also iterated. Based on this, "how to make young people laugh" has become a new topic.
From "If You Are the One 3" and "The Annual Meeting Can't Stop!" Judging from the problem-solving ideas of "Old IP", the former is still stuck in the nonsense of "old IP", the content is old-fashioned and even vulgar, and it is gradually drifting away from the audience; while the latter has penetrated into the workplace where young people are struggling, and has gained the audience's strong sense of substitution with a high sense of substitution. Resonate and give the audience an outlet to vent their emotions.
Specifically speaking, with the Internet now so developed, many people in the film and television industry lamented that "the current audience is too powerful" and the shelf life of "chicken soup" and golden sentences is very short. However, this was the golden signature of "Feng's Comedy" in the past. , I think that when "If You Are the One" was released in 2008, it won the audience and box office because of many famous scenes and golden sentences.
When it came to "If You Are the One 3", the formula remained unchanged, and it was indeed criticized as "outdated". It can be seen that Feng Xiaogang has made efforts to cater to the current situation. He used the popular dopamine color scheme, although it is a bit exaggerated for Dusk Love; he used AI elements, but it was just a superficial science fiction. In the film, the real Xiaoxiao and the AI Xiaoxiao and the male The "two women competing for favor" launched by the protagonist makes people uncomfortable, both in terms of lines and conjectures about female psychology. It has nothing to do with the theme of the movie "What is true love", and it fails to care about reality. What’s more ugly is that the film is embedded with advertisements for beverages, e-commerce platforms, cars, etc. from beginning to end.
Again, "The annual meeting cannot be stopped!" ", adopts the most traditional comedy setting of "the series is made to laugh and cry due to identity misplacement". The absurd story of a fitter, Hu Jianlin, who was mistakenly transferred to the headquarters and promoted three levels in a row during the group's massive layoffs, satirizes the current situation in the workplace. In fact, this setting is not new. It has been used before by Happy Twist in "This Killer Is Not So Calm", "Li Mao Plays the Prince", and "The Shy Iron Fist".
However, the film has a strong workplace relevance, provides the audience with "emotional value" and has a novelty effect. Many viewers have learned about the "black talk" of big factory professions through this film, such as "aligning granularity, focusing on vertical fields, opening up the underlying logic, completing new business formats, and realizing a closed-loop matrix", etc., which are also used in the currently popular "nonsense literature" It was very smooth, such as "The key to the problem is to find the key question", etc., which made the young audience call it "too right". At the same time, under the comedy shell of the movie, there is a "down-to-earth" workplace story, involving office culture, hidden rules, and bureaucratic inaction, which made the working people sitting in the theater empathize and cry again and again. Laughed. Many viewers said passionately, "The actor in the movie is playing me", "It's like surveillance was installed in my company", and "The workers' mouths are used for the film".
《The annual meeting cannot be stopped! "The train of the times roars forward, and there must be someone under the wheel to increase friction." This line hit many people. At the end of the movie, the company got back on track thanks to Hu Jianlin's bold resistance, although it was very cliché and "idealistic" ", but it brought a little comfort to the audience.
One is about love and the other is about the workplace. They are both topics of concern to young audiences at the moment, but "The Annual Meeting Can't Stop!" "Through "complaining about the workplace", it makes workers empathize and laugh heartily, while "If You Are the One 3" exposes the outdated core under the bright shell, which is very close to farce, but too far away from the audience.
Complaints are complaints. The failure of "If You Are the One 3" made many viewers sigh. Because Feng Xiaogang created the Lunar New Year movie with "Party A and Party B" in 1997. Since then, he has produced more than ten comedies such as "Big Shot", "See You or Be Parted", "Endless", "Cell Phone", "I'm Not Pan Jinlian" and the "If You Are the One" series. film and became the spokesperson for the Lunar New Year comedy. Feng's early comedies had humorous lines, the absurdity and drama of life, a down-to-earth little character temperament, and a mockery of seriousness and authority. They had a distinctive style and dominated the scene for many years. However, with the changes of the times and the diversification of audience needs, Feng Xiaogang's film style seems to have solidified, but he continues to turn his back to the audience and use experience to copy new works. Not only does he have an arrogant creative attitude, but he is also difficult to adapt to the current market.
So, here’s the problem. Young people have grown up with the Internet. They live in an era when short videos are booming, and they have seen too many funny jokes and barrages. How can comedy movies make young people sit still and laugh at the same time? The key to solving the problem may lie in understanding young people deeply. Only by understanding the essence of the real stories and real problems they encounter and presenting them in a humorous and interesting way while giving some hope can it be possible to make them cry and make them laugh. Providing emotional value and allowing them to get a "sense of departure" from thinking may be the direction that comedy creation needs more efforts.
Yangtze Evening News/Ziniu News reporter Kong Xiaoping
proofreader Li Haihui
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