If nothing else happens, " " may become the biggest winner in the 2024 summer season. National combinations such as Shen Teng and Ma Li , Yan Fei and Peng Damo's "Xihong City Universe", supplemented by the family fun setting of Happy Twist, as well as themes and laughter suitable for all ages, all make this movie The movie has locked in the audience's base in advance, and within one week of its release, the box office has exceeded 1.5 billion yuan.
In the movie, Ma Chenggang (played by Shen Teng) is the leading rich man in Xihong City. His eldest son with his ex-wife was "wasted" by him, so he turned his attention to his second son with his current wife Chunlan (played by Ma Li). His son Ma Jiye (played by Xiao Bochen in his childhood and Shi Pengyuan in his youth) decided to train him to be a qualified successor to the family business through "pretending to be poor and raising him in poverty".
At first glance, the title "Catch a Baby" was a bit confusing. It was only after watching the movie that I understood the pun of the word. On the one hand, it points to the familiar modern proverb "Education starts with dolls"; on the other hand, it reflects the claw machine in the shopping mall. Ma Jiye is like a doll in the window, being manipulated in a limited space.
's "pun" also brought out the cruel undertone of the film. The most terrifying thing about "Catch a Baby" is that Ma Jiye's growth process was a complete educational experiment, and his father kneaded the shape he wanted like plasticine. In order to let his son grow up to be a person like himself, Ma Chenggang provided him with a "quasi-vacuum" living space based on the environment in which he grew up as a child, so that he could "exercise his will in a difficult environment." It is precisely because of the existence of this space that the exaggerated and spectacle-style comedy elements in the film can be stacked and implemented. The contrast between the rich inside and the poor outside and Ma Jiye's information gap on family cognition constitute the main laugh point of the film. source. And its side effects are also obvious - how arrogant and full of fantasy it is for the rich to pretend to be poor and live the imaginary life of the poor. As netizens joked, "Paying money to watch rich people play us is really dumbfounding."
The viewing process of "Catch a Baby" is easily reminiscent of many overseas movies. For example, the setting of "A Life of Being Deceived" is compared to the classic movie "The Truman Show". And "the rich pretend to be poor for their children" is exactly the same as the Indian comedy " starting line ". As for the story of "Dad Educating the Rich Second Generation", it is very similar to the Russian comedy "The Rich Second Generation", except that in "The Rich Second Generation" the rich father corrects the "eldest son who has been abandoned".
Fortunately, the "similarity" in settings does not prevent "Catch a Baby" from fitting into the local context. The most successful part of it is that it captures the two major topics of money and education, and can arouse widespread discussion and resonance at the moment. After all, in the minds of many parents, the intuitive manifestation of educational results is to enable children to have the ability to make money when they grow up. "Catching Dolls" cuts in from this point and integrates these two major topics.
"The rich pretend to be poor" and must be careful not to let their son and outsiders discover it. This is the main contradiction throughout the film. The child is kept in the dark, the father insists on his own way, the mother half-heartedly gives in, and the people around him fully cooperate with the acting... Audience Looking at this farce from the perspective of a bystander, the laughter is enough and dense enough.
However, there are also many problems exposed in this process. For example, the film uses the "gap between rich and poor" as an issue, which is suspected of vilifying the poor. When Ma Jiye was a child, he picked up drink bottles to exchange for money, and was ridiculed and ridiculed by his classmates as a "trash horse". Later, young Ma Jiye found his own villa. In order to avoid being a gangster, Ma Chenggang and Chunlan put on the clothes of a gardener and a maid, letting the gardener and maid play the role of a wealthy couple. As a result, the poor "don't look like a prince even if they wear dragon robes." , made a lot of fools of themselves.
This kind of joke is actually very cruel, because it is based on the real pain of many people. The audience was tickled and laughed, but they also suffered from a psychological burden: Is it really that fun for the rich to make fun of the poor?
In addition, the binary opposition between "poor education" and "rich education" is more like the creator's laziness in discussing educational concepts or catering to traditional concepts.The concepts of "You can become a great person only if you endure hardships", "Poverty raises talented people", and "Rich families often have losers" are no longer applicable today, and "It is difficult to produce a noble son from a poor family" is the problem that needs to be faced urgently. . What's more, the so-called "poor" in the movie is not "poor" in the true sense: the private chef disguised the sea cucumbers on the "young master's" table as mushrooms, and the foreigners he encountered on the way to school who asked for directions were all accompanied by the "young master" "NPCs (non-player characters) who practice speaking... The gaps between poverty and wealth are all bridged in a ridiculous way, and there is no real concern about how children from poor families grow up.
It is worth noting that the cruel humor is not only reflected in the film's view of money, but also in its educational view. The story of "Catch a Baby" can be established, and the underlying logic relies entirely on the word "cheating". It tells the story of a parent who deceives under the guise of "for your own good". The older Ma Jiye gets, the more difficult it is for his parents to deceive him, and the frequency of "reveals" and "lies" also increases.
Teacher Li ( Sarina ) is an educator herself. In order to cultivate Ma Jiye's filial piety, she plays the role of his bedridden "grandma", but in fact she is the operator of Ma Jiye's "educational career". When Ma Jiye discovered before the college entrance examination that his grandma could jump and play basketball freely, his carefully run scam was on the verge of bankruptcy. At this time, his father decided to arrange for his grandma's "death". Ma Jiye, who had been calling his grandma for more than ten years, did not know the truth. His feelings for his grandma were real. He was devastated when he bid farewell to the body (of course it was fake). However, the comedy effect of this scene was pushed to the fullest, and the whole family Everyone held down the grandfather and grandson who wanted to "recognize" each other, and the theater burst into laughter. But this comedy effect is entirely based on the sincerity of a child.
Although there are many laughs that I can't help but think about, it is undeniable that "Catch a Baby" is a movie that can make people feel strong empathy. Its range of empathy is extremely wide. Whether you are a child or a parent, you can all see your own shadow in the film. As a child, you will consciously take the place of Ma Jiye, thinking of your own life that was dominated in those years, and of the gentle strangulation carried out by your parents in the name of "for your own good". As parents, they will consciously step into Ma Chenggang's shoes, remembering their earnest wishes for their children to succeed and their daughters to succeed, and feel the same way as Ma Chenggang's closing sentence: "Not only do we control your life, but you also control our lives!"
As the initiator of the whole film, Ma Chenggang did not realize his own problem until his son designed to destroy his "Utopia". He was as pathetic as he felt wronged. This is an extremely selfish and domineering male image. Because his eldest son has "no future," Ma Chenggang does not let him call him dad. Because his younger son's talent for running was discovered by the sports school coach, Ma Chenggang hired a fake doctor to identify him. Injuries". From beginning to end, the father was the absolute authority and never thought about the harm he had caused to his two sons. The appearance of Shen Teng, who is very popular with the audience, undoubtedly adds to the comedy effect of the character, but it also weakens the space for reflection that it can bring.
Ever since Ma Jiye saw through the lie (already near the end), the film began to fall apart. For the sake of a family-friendly ending, parents' lies, control, and abuse of their children are exalted in "Catch Me". After breaking free from the shackles of his parents, Ma Jiye repeated his studies for a year and passed the school of his choice with a score of over 700. Although this result was not the Qingbei that my father expected, it was still a happy one, and everything was as beautiful as a fairy tale. In a sense, it actually confirms the "poor support logic" at the beginning.
But did the entire childhood spent in lies really have no impact on Ma Jiye? At the end of the film, the creator uses Ma Jiye's behavior of deviating from the track to "pick up bottles" while running a marathon, trying to imply everything: Ma Jiye, who seems to have succeeded in resisting, has not escaped the shadow of his youth after all. It's a pity that this bit of sharpness is diluted in laughter, and the past that is imposed on children can never be denied or erased.
Southern People Weekly special writer Zhao Qianhe
editor-in-chief Yang Jingru
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