When it comes to parents, words such as "mother's love is great, and father's love is like a mountain" has long become our mantra of gratitude for family affection and filial piety.
However, how many incompetent parents may give birth to how many innocent children. In the movie, parents are not flawless, and in reality, every family behind closed doors also has sharp contradictions and confrontations that are not outsiders.
Growing up is hard, even bloody, especially for underage children, the distrust and irresponsibility developed since childhood is entirely due to the lack of proper and adequate care. The old ancestor's phrase "ten years of trees, a hundred years of tree people" is by no means alarmist.
Perhaps, with the shell of a family comedy and the core of family education, "Quick Family" can give some applicable suggestions in laughter and anger.
In recent years, in addition to gorgeous and dazzling superheroes and commercial blockbusters, Hollywood's output to domestic theater movies has always been indispensable to the figure of family comedy films.
From the warm and tear-jerking "A Dog's Mission" to the inspirational and beautiful "Miracle Boy", all of them have successfully set off small topics with sweet and smooth chicken soup for the soul.
"Fast Family" belongs to the typical mainstream family comedy, but it can lead to unexpected emotions. Cowboy couples who are new parents, adopted children with very different personalities, such a temporary family, will inevitably make an embarrassing story of chicken flying dog jumping.
In fact, only chicken flying dog jumping is the true portrayal of the family, and people who are not married and have no children cannot truly appreciate this.
Family affection without blood is really rare. From gently removing the diaphragm to the warm melting of the ice, this film allows the audience to experience a good and funny growth journey, which resonates with family education, children's growth, and the cultivation of family affection.
The mature film industry, as well as professional directors and screenwriters, have given mass production films such as "Fast Family" a soul and meaning.
Even if we make blockbusters such as "Wolf Warrior", "Operation Red Sea", and "The Wandering Earth", we still can't get rid of the shadow of Hollywood. It can be seen that Hollywood's strong soft power cannot be underestimated. Routines should still be used with an open mind, and design should still be learned with heart.
Of course, "Quick Family" is not perfect, and the problems caused by routine design are almost all occupied.
The biggest problem with this film is that the role is heavy. This film is almost reduced to a confrontation between a silly white sweet mother and a rebellious eldest daughter.
Rose Byrne, the all-rounder of film and television dramas, from "Bridesmaids My Biggest" all the way to the "Neighbor Wars" series, is absolutely familiar with Hollywood family dramas, like the hot mom role in "Quick Family", there is almost no challenge, plus, there is no one who can fight in the opponent scene, and it is not too easy to grab the scene.
The little beauty Isabella Monet who came out of "Transformers 5" and "Border Killer 2" is definitely a new potential stock in Hollywood, can be young and sunny, but also gloomy and stubborn, Monet's confident and extroverted performance can always make people shine.
Thanks to the screenwriter's clever arrangement of the construction contractor for Wahlberg, otherwise, with that bitter melon face that is like a water-stopping water, I am afraid that I will not even have the opportunity to fully speak the lines.
However, two little guys with distinct personalities are very brilliant, one is cowardly and clumsy cute, one is cute and cute, and almost contracts the cute baby laugh point of the whole film.
As for the Happy Family and the adoption training class, except for the occasional highlight of the two old drama bones, it is almost like a functional background.
Although the warmth to sweetness of the warmth and the humor of the rich atmosphere of life make the audience immersed in it and cannot extricate themselves, as a large-scale adoption propaganda film that strictly follows hollywood routines and sets out, the story line of "Quick Family" is too deliberate, giving people the impression that the feelings have not yet arrived, and the story has arrived.
Where there is comparison, there is harm. The so-called delicate warmth of Hollywood movies is compared with Japanese family feature films such as "Thief Family" and "Family Suffering", which is thick branches and leaves without chewing heads. In "Fast Family", in addition to a few key elements to promote the plot, most of the side plots and elements are ruthlessly ignored.
The details are not enough, the feelings come together. Therefore, in "Quick Family", almost every major character is suspected of overstepped force, as if deliberately pandering to the role, but not so completely obedient.
For example, the role of the mother in the film always gives people a frizzy sense of collapse, and the gentle and delicate maternal love is insufficient; the father basically blindly caters to it, and seems to have no ideas of his own, and family education is suddenly missing half.
The direct impact of the lack of full feelings on the plot is that the characters' motivations are not convincing.
Originally, the main theme of the story of "Fast Family" was: through adoption, rookie parents learn to respect and care, pay more attention to growth, cherish the hard-won family, children eliminate the diaphragm and mustard, and bravely say goodbye to the inferior and unfortunate past.
In the case that the emotional foundation is not enough to support the plot, in the quarrel and forgiveness along the way, everyone behaves very much, love and affection become a family, and the final happy ending is not so moving.
If "Fast Family" only stays at the level of telling family jokes, then it is undoubtedly a bad copy-and-paste film.
What is valuable is that while the film is having a family fun, it also carries out a moderate self-blackening of people's prejudices and stereotypes.
In "Fast Family", the white nervous girl in the adoptive parents can't help but think of it throughout the standard "Weakness"; at the Thanksgiving dinner, relatives bluntly said that they "don't want their children to play with the descendants of murderers and addicts", reflecting the stereotypes and prejudices of ordinary Americans.
In general, the so-called racial prejudice (strong black athletic ability) and class discrimination (Lao Tzu gangster criminals) in the film are only superficial and point-to-point.
After all, compared with "Florida Paradise" and "Carnival", which face class solidification, lack of family education and the cruelty of the growth environment, "Fast Family" has great limitations in structure and audience, and it is not allowed and should not be said too deeply, otherwise it will directly affect the entertainment quality of family fun and destroy the joyful movie-watching atmosphere.
In the film, the adoptive family undergoes training and assessment that lasts several months and passes the test of the trial adoption stage. This not only reflects the soundness and humanity of Western laws and norms, but also warns people from one side: having and raising children is a matter of pay.
As a pair of rookie parents, to give up the previous high-quality two-person world, everything must be learned from scratch. At first, on a whim, they were more concerned about their own fertility difficulties, the cost of artificial insemination, and the motivation for adoption was more like "charity" to obtain a sense of moral superiority.
Adoption is much more difficult than a blood-related family of origin. Young children whose worldview has not yet been fixed can harvest attachment and affection as long as they use continuous companionship and care; semi-old children like the eldest daughter already have the imprint of the original family and the experience of displacement, and it is not overnight to eliminate this "psychological wall".
However, whether it is adoption or self-birth, it is necessary to cross the barrier of affection and respect.
Tacit understanding is honed by parents and children in mutual adaptation and mutual growth. In the film, the adoptive parents played by Mark and Rose are not unsympathetic saints and have made bad decisions, but they have been very serious about adapting to their children, and at the same time, they are also involuntarily changing.
A fast family cannot be a quick one, and true love has no conditions or prerequisites. Mark and Rose paid no matter what, so that the children in the eyes gained love and respect, attachment and trust naturally appeared.
Only by melting the ice in the hearts of the children little by little and slowly establishing feelings can they unconsciously merge into a family. Among them, there is respect and understanding about love and warmth, and unimaginable patience and care can obtain the true respect and recognition of children.
At the end of the film, the cliché arranged for the original mother to fight for custody. Although the ending is beautiful, from one side, it reflects the lack of confidence in the birth mother who is shrinking from the battle and the confusion about the future.
Failing to live up to her promise to the children, I think, was her most helpless decision. The decision raises the possibility that she was "indirectly" stripped of custody in the face of rigid laws and regulations.
In "Florida Paradise", the young mother played by Bria Vinart, who has no skills and is not happy, can only survive by picking up garbage and charitable donations, and even has to sell her body in order to eat.
A single mother like her at the bottom of society, even if she is overwhelmed by survival, does not vent her feelings on her daughter.
However, even living one day and counting one day, even ensuring the food and clothing of children is a problem, let alone taking on the responsibility of correct and high-quality family education. So, in "Florida Paradise", children curse, spit, learn nothing, and have no future.
Just imagine, in a class-solidified society, a mother who has been at the bottom for a long time and has no skills objectively lacks the ability to survive, or even eats or lives, and is deeply involved in the erosion of debt and drug addiction; subjectively unable to compete with the middle-class adoptive parent family with a solid family and excellent conditions, she knows that she cannot give her children a better future, what else can she do but give up custody?
The evaluation of Douban's 7.6 points shows that the family comedy film "Fast Family" is by no means a bad comedy film, it has a clear intention and the support of universalism, and is the product of Hollywood's "family first" political correctness. Especially on the topic of adopting children, this film also gives a relatively satisfactory answer.
However, the routine of family fun and the tendency of political correctness shackle the expansion of this film into a deeper and more specific field. Although it strives to dig up some elements, in the end it only stays on the emotional level of sensational tears.
At this point, I remembered the disabled Jiang Meng played by Yang Mi in the movie "Baby". She did not want to adopt her mother's house, but wanted to continue to take care of her filial piety, however, the cold rules of separation from the surrogate family after the age of 18 made Jiang Meng unable to understand, which led to the tragic result of desperately saving the baby girl.
As a mainstream commercial film, "Fast Family" only stays at the level of family and love, simply through the "abandonment" of the original mother, highlighting the "no giving up" of the adoptive parents, but there is no deeper face to the legal and moral dilemma, no deep digging stereotypes, distorted consciousness, and social indifference and human selfishness.
Although there are many shortcomings, "Fast Family" still deserves the title of excellent family comedy.