The fairy tale king Zheng Yuanjie has returned.
Halfway through the holiday, the National Day film was preceded by "Chosin Lake", "My Father and Me", and then "Big Ears Tutu's Tyrannosaurus Rex in Action" and "Five Teenagers Who Fluttered". Sandwiched in the middle is a children's film, Pipilu and The Canned Villain of Lusisi.
5 days after its release, "Pipilu and Lusisi's Canned Villain" currently has a box office of 24.9 million, a Douban score of 7.2, and a cat's eye score of 9.1. At first glance, as a children's film, the results are not bad. People who like it say that they have regained their childhood memories, and people who hate it are irresponsible to tell stories.
So what about Pipilu and Rusisi's Canned Villain?
The story of the film is very simple. It mainly tells the story of the twins Pipilu and Rusisi, who have very different personalities, and find five capable villains in the can in their home.
Children plus fantasy characters, this setting is very common in children's films. The United Kingdom has the famous "Paddington Bear", and the country has Zhou Xingchi's "Yangtze River Seven". There are generally two main points to watch, one is the fantasy of the super power part, and the other is the self-growth of young people after obtaining "super powers".
On both points, Pipilu and The Canned Man of Rusisi is almost on the fly.
In the fantasy part, the film does not jump out of the routine of the same kind of children's films to rebel against authority. Cheating on exams, cheating on parents, resolving classmate conflicts... The same plot in such films is constantly staged. Compared with the various fantasies of heaven and earth transforming into flying in "Yangtze River No. 7", the villains in "Pipilu and Lusisi's Canned Villain" are really ordinary.
Fortunately, the contrast between the size of the villain and the real object adds a lot of childlike color to the film.
The fantasy part is the icing on the cake, and the growth of young people is the top priority of the film. In the film, the main task of growing up as a teenager is given to Lusisi. Rusisi has excellent grades, Pippiru is mischievous and playful, and has always been a good student in the eyes of parents and teachers. After meeting the villain, Lusisi's grades "went wrong", and Pippiru became a genius student. In the school of the hero of the score theory, the psychological gap between the top students becoming latecomers is the main line of the growth of Lusisi's characters.
Unfortunately, the whole process of the poor student counterattack was built-in, and Lusisi did not escape the imprisonment of the theory of meritocracy in the end. At the end, a fire shifts the essential contradiction, and both parents and teachers wake up and achieve a happy ending.
It's not that this plot setting is so bad, but it's always a bit deliberate and stale.
To be sure, the quality of Pipilu and The Canned Little Man of Rusisi is not bad, and the childlike fantasies and the core of caring for children's growth are reflected in the film. But this is not enough, this is not the audience's expected Zheng Yuanjie's work.
Since the publication of her first story, "Black and Black on Honesty Island" in 1979, Zheng Yuanjie has been creating fairy tales for more than forty years. From the earliest "Pipilu Biography" to "Pipilu's Rubik's Cube Mansion" to the later "Shuk and Beta", Zheng Yuanjie's fairy tales run through countless childhood memories after 8090.
However, looking at his works, you will find that unlike the fairy tales of beautiful healing in conventional cognition, Zheng Yuanjie's works are very cruel and even inappropriate for children.
In his works, it is often full of adult hypocrisy and the dark side of modern society, while the opposite is the pure and direct childlike heart of the child protagonists. Simplicity and hypocrisy contrast with each other, making the light brighter and the darker darker, full of irony of the adult world.
Leaving aside the childhood shadow of many people, "Rubik's Cube Mansion", even in the "Shuk and Beta" series, there is irony of group prejudice and a discussion of the boundaries between good and evil.
Pippiru and The Canned Villain of Lusisi is the second work on the big screen in Zheng Yuanjie's "Pippiru and Rusisi" series. The first work was "The Taming of the Rabbit", which was released in 2018.
Compared to Pipilu and The Canned Little Man of Rusisi, the story of The Taming of the Rabbit is more ironic. Pipilu enters a school where as long as he obeys his teacher," flattery becomes a "well-behaved rabbit." At first, people ridiculed the "obedient rabbit", but with the continuous brainwashing of the authoritative forces on campus, becoming a "well-behaved rabbit" has become something that everyone desires. So the "monsters" became the majority, and normal people became monsters. The assertive Pipilu became an outlier in people's eyes.
The story of "The Taming of the Rabbit" is not only enlightening for children, but also alluded to the adult world.
What about Pipilu and Rusisi's Canned Villain? In fact, the core theme of the film is very clear, that is, to oppose excessive competition and rigid education, and to oppose meritocracy. Its core is still the consistent satire and exposure of reality in Zheng Yuanjie's works, but there is always a lack of energy in performance.
Teachers look at students with colored glasses in school, parents only pay attention to children's grades, how to take care of children's psychological growth? At a time when children are overwhelmed by excessive competition, are adults also caught up in society? The film lists a series of poignant questions, but there is no guidance or hint at the correct way to deal with it from beginning to end.
Do parents love their children? Do teachers love their students? The answer is yes, but love doesn't solve real problems. "Pipiru and The Canned Villain of Rusisi" cuts through the cruelty of reality, but finally wraps the wounds of reality with truth, goodness and beauty. How to heal the wound depends on the parents themselves to understand. Didn't think of a way? Then have a good understanding. This makes the overall idea of the film seem untrustworthy and slightly far-fetched.
Fortunately, the story is only a story, and the implementation of the dual reduction policy of education in reality seems to bring hope to these problems and solve them.
【Text/Jiujiu】