Note: There are spoilers for this article
I have to say that this year's Spring Festival file is too rolled, so that although it was originally not very prominent, the comedy film "Exchange Life" as a "stable and demand" genre turned out to be the last student in the same schedule.
"Exchange Life" poster
In terms of the Spring Festival file over the years, "Exchange Life" is completely appropriate and appropriate choice in terms of genre (fantasy, comedy), cast (Lei Jiayin, Zhang Xiaofei), plot (dislocation farce caused by changing bodies), theme (home is the most important "thousand gold does not change") and other aspects, ranking fourth after the stronger lineup "The Wandering Earth 2", "Manjiang Red" and "Nameless" in the pre-sale stage, and has now been overtaken by the two animations "Bear Haunted" and "Deep Sea" for three consecutive days, and the Douban score has also fallen to 5.7.
As of 18 o'clock on January 25, the Douban score of "Exchange Life" is 5.7, which is the lowest Douban score among the seven Spring Festival movies this year
From the point of view, if it is not too strong the opponent, "Exchange Life" can be regarded as a fruitless family warmth sketch, and even the design of many single scenes is very ingenious, the laughter design is ingenious and not vulgar, and it also fully explores the charm of the actor's own performance and character. The protagonist characters, especially the heroine's character, are also very pleasing.
But the whole movie follows the director's fantasy setting all the way down, and I always feel that something is not quite right. The reason for this is probably caused by the misalignment of the plot progress and the final theme landing point.
"Living Together in Time and Space" poster
Director Su Lun's last debut feature film "Living Together in Time and Space" is a very completed commercial sketch, with both fluency and coordination, coupled with the flexible and light scheduling of fantasy scenes, which surprised many audiences. Therefore, under the expectation of the previous game, the idea of changing into a new idea, which has been difficult to play, has also become exciting.
The first sentence of a certain version of the trailer asks the question, "Uncle and teenager, which do you like?" "At the beginning of the character's appearance, it was also obvious that the director had made some design and effort in the aspect of standing up the character, and the actors also showed the difference in their age states in their performances. This is also reminiscent of the problems faced by the characters in the previous "Living Together in Time and Space". Xiao Jiao loves Lu Ming, who lives in 1999, not Lu Shiyi, who has a successful career, and Lu Ming chose to save Xiao Jiao's father at the last moment to change history and eventually lost love. These designs are quite similar to the situations and choices faced by Jin Hao and Xiaotani in "Exchange Life".
But such a multiple-choice question, acting on "Lei Jiayin" and "Zhang Youhao", who were exchanged for life, ended up just chaotically pounding a few handfuls of paste for a love that ended without a problem, and "returning for the sake of returning" fell on a seemingly correct but not fully expressed theme. From the perspective of love to the perspective of family, the creator failed to control the direction of story creation, and the narrative of this story in different directions eventually fell into the embarrassing situation of failure.
A still from "Exchange of Life"
In "Exchange Life", the bodies exchanged are the middle-aged unscrupulous lawyer played by Lei Jiayin and the naïve teenager played by Zhang Youhao, who has a crush on a female teacher. The main perspective unfolds from the side of the teenager Xiaotani - after exchanging bodies with the blind date of his crush goddess "Zhang Xiaofei" because of a traffic accident, he is swept away from his originally happy home, and after accepting the setting that he wants to live in the body of his "love enemy" for 7 days, he begins a series of sabotage.
In order to let the goddess "bow" to her "flesh", he showed the arrogance, greasy and lewd of a middle-aged man, but the youthful spirit he inadvertently showed still made the other party like this "uncle with a sense of youth". Lei Jiayin, the interpreter in this relationship, fully shows the charm of "uncle-faced young heart" in the film, with a sly sincere smile between the silly and silly, which is very attractive.
A still from "Exchange of Life"
At the same time, "Zhang Xiaofei", as the most directly affected object after the change, involves a full clue between her and her mother. The passage on how older leftover women deal with the pressure of their parents' "urging marriage", as well as the warmth and support between mother and daughter that cannot be concealed in the vitriol, all highlight Su Lun's observation of the situation of women as a female director, and the interpretation method also gets rid of the mother-in-law or sensational temperament common in the usual parent-child relationship between laughter and anger, which is very cheerful and cute.
In the progress of the love line, there are many ironic and heart-pounding electric stone fire moments, the throbbing in the super large cup of bubble tea, the cards on the two-dimensional wine table, and the out-of-tune singing still can't hide the light in the eyes of the people you like. Suren is indeed a director who is good at filming love, and a glance exchange in spinning and running can brew sugar.
A still from "Exchange of Life"
The cameo Xiao Yue Yue smelled the "smell of love" in a line in the film, and judging from the progress of the plot in the first half of the film, there are enough suspense foreshadowing, and the progress should also be a logical and good-looking romance film. But the film suddenly turns around and comes to the other side of the exchange life.
And "Lei Jiayin", who lives in the body of "Zhang Youhao", can re-experience family and friendship, but unfortunately has been completely reduced to a "tool man" - he witnessed the romance and warmth of "Zhang Youhao"'s parents throwing dog food wildly, experienced the innocence and helplessness of Alzheimer's grandma returning to her childhood, and witnessed the careful calculation of a well-off family in order to take down half of the neighbor's storefront, but the family's interaction with him always seems to be itching through the boots, just to complete the funny task of a single scene.
Like a villain who must jump out from time to time to emphasize the situation of the character and the progress of the lawsuit, he also succeeds in achieving the destructive behavior that a villain needs to do, forcing the exchange to be impossible. But this half seems to be in order to show the beauty of the family itself and the friendship between the family, the character of "Middle-aged Xiao Gu" is always an outsider, providing an external perspective, and has not participated in this life to obtain organic interaction, which also makes the audience unable to enter the relationship of the whole family to empathize, and then make his motivation to prevent each other from switching back to the body becomes abrupt and far-fetched.
A still from "Exchange of Life"
There are too many ineffective settings in the film that distract the audience and distract from the effectiveness of the narrative. For example, in the family clues in the previous article, the suspense of the family to find the account password of the short video blogger Grandma once made people think that the secret hidden by Grandma would be more important to the family, and finally found the video presented by the password became the end of the entire movie, and even the surreal space where the two heroes could change bodies actually existed in the park about Grandma finding the lost valley when she was a child.
These plots should play a more critical role in helping to advance and rationalize the narrative in a fantasy setting, and in the process of plot development throughout the film, the search for the password and the meaning of this content are absent, and there is no dramatic connection and promotion with the situation of everyone. This inevitably makes the final grandmother's statement deliberately sensational - this short video, with the interpretation of teacher Wu Yanshu, may not be much less touching because of the lack of the first 100 minutes of foreshadowing.
From a more complete narrative logic, if it is a setting of two male protagonists, two people should have obtained their own growth through the exchange of life, and they should find a solution and export direction for the dilemma they were originally in, which is the task that a standard commercial genre film should complete. If only one of them is the main line of exchange, spending so much effort on the love line without end is even more fragmented.
Of course, it is correct to praise the warmth of the family, but obviously the broken jar is broken, regardless of the previous logic, let the damaged game console casually let the male protagonist return to his original life to "find himself", let the money-greedy heroine's mother suddenly find her conscience to punish evil and promote good, let the heroine who is deeply trapped in the dilemma of an older leftover woman ignite the heartbeat spark and scarred suddenly free, let the password that has been looking for a long time suddenly unlock Chen Qing's family reunion... Such an ending really has to be said, too casual scribbling.
A still from "Exchange of Life"