(January 3, 2021, Shanghai, cinema, New Year's Day movie posters, "Send You a Little Red Flower", "Warm Hug", "Bomb Disposal Expert 2", "Emergency Rescue".) IC photo / figure)
This year's New Year's Day slot is the best New Year's Day slot in history, "Send You a Little Red Flower" leads the box office, and the comedy movie "Warm Hug" follows close behind. "Send You a Little Red Flower" has received a good reputation on multiple scoring platforms, but "Warm Hugs" is not, the word of mouth collapsed, and many viewers called out "bad movies" after watching it, and said that they were deceived by the trailer.
In the trailer, Shen Teng and Ma Li are the main actors, and the audience expects that "Warm Hugs" will be the next "Charlotte Troubles". You can buy a ticket to watch the movie only to find out: "Warm Hugs" is just hanging shen Tengmali's name to "cheat" the box office. If it is not to encounter a good schedule, if it is not "cheated" well, with the quality of this movie, it is impossible to get such a good result.
In retrospect, there have been very few blockbuster comedies in the past two years, and street-beating or dismal reputations abound. What happened to Chinese comedy movies?
The evolution of comedy films
Comedy has been the favorite genre of cinema for Chinese audiences for a long time.
The late 1990s to the 2000s were Feng Xiaogang's comedy era. In 1997, "Party A and Party B", directed by Feng Xiaogang and starring Ge You, opened the curtain of "Feng's Comedy" and also opened the era of Ge You + Feng's comedy dominating the New Year file. Feng's comedies such as "No Seeing, Not Dispersing" in 1999, "Endless" in 2000, "Big Names" in 2001, "Mobile Phone" in 2003, and "Do Not Disturb" in 2008 were all domestic film box office champions of that year.
Feng Xiaogang's comedy features citizen comedy, which focuses on citizen life. At the beginning of the transition of the new and old centuries, the development and change of the whole society and culture was very fast, the rise of the market economy, the vigorous development of mass culture, the fierce conflict between new and old values, Feng's comedy keenly grasped the pulse of change, and the problems encountered by the urban people in real life and the contradictions touched at that time may be found in Feng's comedy. As a result, Fung's comedy was able to resonate with the civic class at that time.
From the middle and late 2000 to the middle of 2010, it was the era of newcomer comedy directors such as Ning Hao and Xu Zheng. In 2006, Ning Hao's "Crazy Stone" won a high box office at low cost, creating the first wave of comedy creation in Chinese films in the 21st century; in 2012, Xu Zheng's "Tai 囧" became the box office champion of that year; in 2014, Ning Hao's "Heart Flower Road Release" became the domestic film box office champion that year... Over the years, Ning Hao and Xu Zheng are still active in the front line of comedy creation.
Behind the rise of Ning Hao and Xu Zheng comedy is the rise of the middle class. The middle class has become the backbone of society and has more and more discourse power. Comedy films also potentially cater to the emotional needs of the off-screen middle class, trying to find answers to the middle-class crisis and the midlife crisis. For example, Xu Zheng's "Tai 囧", "Hong Kong 囧" and "囧Mom", the protagonists are all middle-aged men in a midlife crisis, and after a comedy trip, he is healed.
In the middle and late 2010, it belongs to the comedy era of happy twist. In 2015, the originally unpretentious "Charlotte Troubles" achieved a box office performance of 1.4 billion; in 2017, "Shy Iron Fist" became the national day box office champion with a box office score of 2.2 billion; in 2018, "The Richest Man in Xihong" won 2.5 billion yuan in the summer file... Although this time's "Warm Hugs" is not produced by Happy Twist, several leading actors are regular guests of Happy Twist movies, such as Shen Teng, Ma Li, Chang Yuan, Wei Xiang, and Wang Zhi.
Behind the rise of Happy Twist is the rise of "small town youth". The number of cinemas and screens in China continues to grow, and cinemas continue to spread to third- and fourth-tier cities and some small towns. Movies are no longer just the exclusive supply of big city citizens and the middle class, and small-town youth have become an important group of moviegoers. In order to cater to the fun of small-town youth, "The Inspirational Counterattack of Little People" has become a common template for comedy movies; in movies, inconspicuous little people can eventually have a double harvest of career love.
The Spring Festival in 2019 is the only peak period of comedy in the past two years, "Crazy Alien" directed by Ning Hao, starring Huang Bo and Shen Teng, "Flying Life" directed by Han Han and starring Shen Teng, all achieved good box office results; Zhou Xingchi's "King of New Comedy" box office was lower than expected. Since then, few comedy films have exceeded 1 billion yuan at the box office. In 2018, the happy twist "Li Cha's Aunt" hit the street, and "The Sun Never Sets" repeatedly jumped the file, which is still unsettled; the 2019 comedy movie "Human Comedy" and "Dance! Elephants and "Rat Hero" are all mediocre; 2020's "Half a Comedy" and "Two Tigers" are not outstanding at the box office. The 2020 National Day file "My Hometown and Me" is one of the few exceptions.
Comedy films have gone from extremely popular genres to generally bland performances, so why?
(December 27, 2020, Beijing, the world premiere of the movie "Warm Hugs".) IC photo / figure)
Comedy cannot be reduced to cheap teasing
It is not that the audience does not love comedy, but the audience is tired of some comedy routines and comedy techniques.
On the one hand, the comedy formula as far as the eye can see is "little people counterattack", and the core of comedy is chicken soup. A small person, a loser on the scene, under the yin and yang, after a series of ridiculous processes, his hidden qualities of kindness, strength, bravery and so on were released, and finally completed the counterattack. Many times, such counterattacks are almost a pipe dream, and their ideological value is very empty.
"Warm Hugs" doesn't go beyond that mode either. Bao Bao, played by Chang Yuan, was originally a mental illness patient with severe cleanliness + obsessive-compulsive disorder, and never had any friends. But after accidentally encountering Song Wen, a girl who has always brought him an accident, the two did not fight and did not know each other, and finally sent warmth to heal Bao Bao, and Bao Bao also hugged the beauty.
The counterattack in the movie is almost unconvincing. A person with a serious mental cleanliness addiction, just get a shower of foot wash? A very ugly-looking person, singing a childish song with a beautiful woman, suddenly became a hot spot on the whole network, and even this ugly man was praised by the whole network as "cute"? I believe that most viewers will roll their eyes when they see this bridge section, which is not self-confidence but narcissism.
On the other hand, the most important source of comedy laughter is contrast, and strong contrast can create unexpected dramatic effects, breaking the audience's established common sense and cognition, and thus making the audience laugh. "Warm Hugs" does have a lot of contrasts, from lines, character appearances to character behavior, but the audience's feedback is more of an awkward laugh or can't laugh. The root lies in the serious distortion of the entire script, the film loses the logic of the script in order to create laughter, the characters are seriously flattened, and the details of the film seem to tell you - "this is made up blindly".
Bao Bao is a piano teacher, no students want to take his class, but he was not criticized, not expelled, and commuted to work every day? How did Song Wenwen get PUA by Wang Weiren, played by Qiao Shan? What psychiatrist has become a psychopath because the patient himself? What hospital treats mentally ill people by "stocking" them into "gardens"? No plot of "Warm Hugs" is grounded and can resonate with the audience, and its main plot is completely a product of nonsense.
"Warm Hugs" reflects a serious drawback of current comedy creation: treating comedy as a cheap joke, treating comedy as a fragmented collection of paragraphs, thinking that scratching the arm socket to make the audience laugh is comedy... It is true that comedy allows exaggeration and absurdity, but the core of good comedy must be implemented and fall on the audience's universal life experience in order to stimulate the audience's emotional resonance.
It is easy to write a few paragraphs, but it is the most testing of comedians to connect them into a complete, realistic story. The director of "Warm Your Hugs" obviously does not have this talent. I hope that it will get a good box office this time and will not bring a wrong demonstration to the comedy industry, if Chinese comedy takes the route of "Warm Hugs", I am afraid that there is only one dead end.
Dramatist Nan Zhou knows