The live-action comedy is about to kowtow, and you have to admit losing to animation this time

Truth be told, it's been a long time since I laughed so much in the cinema.

At the beginning, I chose to watch the screening of "Tea Ah No. 2", purely out of curiosity, but also because I noticed that the reviews of the previous films were very, very good.

Although when I first watched it, I did have a little doubt about life.

The painting style is strange: the homeroom teacher who teaches English is an "extermination teacher".

The plot is outrageous: the scumbags in the class go to the Internet café to play games, and she rides a northeastern tricycle "upside down on a donkey" to chase and kill them.

What a weird cartoon!

At the moment, I even kind of want to leave directly.

But after watching it for a while, I started to slap me a little in the face. Because it's really funny!

I was a little ashamed to laugh at first, but soon I started laughing loudly.

After all, the people around me laughed louder than I did.

And according to my observations, the ones around me who smiled the most were just like me, social animals adults who were very serious and skeptical when they entered the venue.

There was even a person who was always looking at her phone at the beginning, and I wanted to remind her to turn down the brightness a little. But after a while, she consciously never picked up her phone again and watched the movie very seriously.

Including myself, in fact, before turning off the lights, I was still thinking, there is this work has not been finished ah, that due still has to catch up... In short, a bunch of worries. Even if the person has arrived at the cinema, the heart is still stuck at the workstation. Perhaps this is the daily life of social animals.

But watching in the cinema and laughing with the people next to me, I actually left all my work behind. I haven't felt such a "pure" experience in a movie theater for a long time, but maybe because this anime is too happy and pure, it also heals me.

At least the moment I walked out of the cinema, like the people around me, I did feel a long-lost ease and cheerfulness. It's a really nice feeling to be able to escape the adult world for a while for 90 minutes.

Why can the seemingly ordinary "Tea Ah Two Middle School" poke us?

Probably, precisely because it's simple enough.

This simplicity is first reflected in the level of the play.

Many comedies are created in the form of additions, piles up stalks, piles up all kinds of jokes and jokes, and makes up enough time. Although this is funny, it is completely fragmented, and lacks a kind of consistency and logical coherence inside.

And "Tea Ah Two Middle School" is obviously doing subtraction.

The laughs in the play are basically around a core, although the laughs are also very dense, but you will feel that they are all based on the development of the plot and the shaping of the characters to advance, and there are also their internal progression, reversal and logical relationships. Like dense branches and leaves growing from a rhizome, they are strongly supported.

As an example, the core of the film is a body swapping meme. "Naughty scum" Wang Qiang and "irascible class teacher" Shi Miaona exchanged bodies.

Body swapping memes are actually quite common in comedies, so how can you make the audience's eyes shine?

First of all, the personality must be stable. On the one hand, the character of the character itself must be solid enough and exaggerated enough, on the other hand, in the relationship between the characters, it is necessary to grasp the opposition and contradiction between the characters.

So after the body exchange, the originally strict teacher became the "child king" who took the students to physical education classes, played crazy, and made revolutions; The scumbags who were originally not in tune have become "traitors" among the students, forcing their classmates to study.

Cool point has: "bad students" have the power, can lead the whole class to rebel, and realize the ultimate dream of "physical education class all day" and "never occupy class by the class teacher again", full of the rebellious spirit of the student era, which is a break of the established order. It can even be said that it fulfilled the dream of each of our audiences in high school.

There are also laughing points: the "teacher" is trapped in the student's body, obviously dedicated to maintaining order in the classroom, but he is first ruthlessly punished by his colleagues, and then tied to a flagpole by his classmates. The dislocation of identity, the reversal of power brought about, her embarrassment, embarrassment, and helplessness constitute the best nonsensical jokes.

Another simplicity of "Tea Ah No. 2 Middle School" is that all the dramatic conflicts revolve very closely around campus life.

Before watching the film, if you ask me, what do I do every day in high school? I may roll my eyes and tell you, of course, to do the questions.

But on the contrary, in the process of watching the film, I recalled with some surprise that I had done so many things in high school: jumping chickens and dogs in class, nagging in the toilet with classmates, going back to the bedroom at night to do cleaning, eating supper while studying, and talking about the night after the lamp...

And this movie is very original, shooting our youth and the most real and down-to-earth little things in these middle school years.

The reason why they have become interesting is precisely because the creators have cleverly grasped the detachment and brain hole of the animation form to amplify and exaggerate everything. These seemingly nonsensical and absurd jokes can essentially cause the audience to laugh, or because they resonate, because they awaken our memories of our middle school days.

And this also depends on the main creator, who not only has full observation and excavation of middle school life, but also can maximize the advantages of animation itself.

Even, you will find that in the end, even the core "mission" of this film is a very, very small thing.

In most school-themed works, the core task will be the college entrance examination that determines the fate, or at least a very important exam. But the goal of "Tea Ah II Middle School" is very, very small, just a very small thing.

Simple, does not mean bland.

Good comedy is very imaginative, it needs to make an absurd thing believable, and "Tea Ah Two Middle School" proves this. They turn a small event into a "big thing", into a rescue that counts against time, a thrilling conflict, brotherly blood, and the great unity that holds an entire class together. They will tell a small thing, colorful, ups and downs, vivid and interesting.

Similarly, simplicity does not mean superficial or superficial.

What is valuable is that in a fairly limited space, "Tea Ah Two Middle School" not only has a relaxed and healing side, but also implies irony, criticism and thinking about reality.

The film also exposes some "unspoken rules" of campus life in a very light way: such as differential treatment of excellent students, or other unfair and high-sounding pretenses.

At the beginning of the story, the student scum changed into the body of the class teacher, trying to break the established order of the campus through the power of the teacher. This is, of course, just playing nonsense.

But at the end of the story, teachers and students physically return to their places, but they work together to break some invisible unspoken rules, so as to achieve common growth.

From one kind of "breaking" to another "breaking", the script draws a successful end, achieving inner integrity, and the characters are sublimated and achieve their own arcs.

At the end of the story, it is very hot-blooded, very burning, and very sincere. A good comedy should have a layer of practical meaning to back it up. "Cha Ah No. 2 Middle School" seems to be about the growth of teachers and the joyful campus life, but there are also reflections on the education system and a true echo of reality. This is even more respectful.

Subtraction in the play, addition in production

Behind the seemingly relaxed and happy comedy is a team that insists on animation dreams and dies for comedy animation.

After watching the movie, I can't help but also get to know the behind-the-scenes team of "Tea Ah No. 2 Middle School". This is now known as "one of the top comedy teams in China" and has been silently insisting for ten years.

Because he came from an online drama in his early years and had limited resources, even the voice actors mainly relied on colleagues to "work part-time": personnel, publicity and operation, storyboard design... Including directors and producers, all of them were pulled over as voice actors.

When making the film, the director also considered asking professionals to dub the Mandarin version, but found that it was not right. On the contrary, since the online drama, this group of "part-time workers" has long become the most professional voice actors, the most suitable and the most understanding of the characters.

The actors are personally played by the director: director Yan Kai, who has played 19 roles by himself, has also knelt down 10 times for a 1-second shot.

The team has written a short biography of characters ranging from thousands of words to tens of thousands of words for each character who appears in the film, and everyone has a very detailed resume, from monthly exam results, middle school examination results, what he likes to eat, to what his parents do, how his native family will affect him....

In order to find creative inspiration, the director personally lived in high school for three months, ate and lived with students, participated in evening self-study, went to the cafeteria to grab meals, and even took exams together, etc., meticulously recording all the real state of students.

From the online drama to the movie, it took the team a full five years. In the past five years, they have always maintained the same creative habits, and they strive for perfection in laughter, and the laughter that comes to mind for the first time is basically not used. Some important jokes can be changed six or seven hundred times, and a character's expression can be done nearly a hundred.

And from the dream to the present, it took them almost ten years. The first online drama of "Tea Ah No. 2" came out in 2014, and in the past ten years, they have driven Didi, washed cars, changed studios several times, and taken over a lot of outsourcing... But in the end, it persisted.

In this day and age, change is easy.

Instead, it's harder to keep it simple and stay the same.

One of the words we often say is "keep your original intention". Because I have said it so many times that I have almost forgotten its original meaning.

But looking back at "Tea Ah No. 2 Middle School", "original intention" is still the most suitable word for it.

"Original intention" is that the main creator insists on telling stories from a child's perspective, without adult judgment and scrutiny, only the middle two and blood of youth.

"Original intention" is also the main creator's only desire to bring the audience the simplest and most direct happiness in just 90 minutes. No preaching, no burden, just making a movie, only telling a comedy.

It is about what seems the smallest and most insignificant. A group of high school students fought hard for an open class. It has nothing to do with the grand narrative, but it is simple and sincere. It is closely related to the youth of each of us.

It allows us to return to the youth of the second year of secondary school in just 91 minutes, to the age when we can laugh wildly, and to the simplest and most basic happiness of middle school.

It's hard to do comedy, it's even harder to do animated comedy

The form of animation is originally more difficult than live-action comedy, from script to characters, from 0 to 1, without any bonus of actors and topics. The subject matter related to the campus has many sensitivities and restrictions.

But live-action comedy is not competitive enough.

Nowadays, most live-action comedies are still stuck in the stage of jokes, fragments, and urine comedy or playing vulgar memes. Actors are harlequin tool people most of the time, how stupid how to act, how to be ugly... The plot also does not need logic, and wherever it is written, the sense of design is very strong.

On the other hand, "Tea Ah Two Middle School" allows us to see the "original intention" of a comedy. Use solid characters, use smooth, typed narrative, and combined with animation imagination to create a good, advanced comedy.

At least in terms of completion, it has surpassed most comedy movies on the market.

Summer file needs "Tea Ah Two Middle School"

I am very happy to wait for "Tea Ah No. 2 Middle School" in the summer.

Today, our film market seems to be becoming more and more fragmented. On the one hand, there is a huge impact of short videos, but on the other hand, there are large feature films of three hours at every turn.

In order to retain the audience, every film must have a grasp, a pain point of the times, and a direct attack on the national mood. To rise to a certain value, to have a grand theme, to have a higher pattern.

But I read only two words out of it, "boring."

Adult life is already boring, serious, and depressing.

But when we enter the cinema, the summer movies are all the same boring, serious, and educational.

I obviously want to find happiness in the movie, but I find that anxiety is also playing out on the same screen.

It seems that the creators have also forgotten that the "summer file" should have been the happiest and simplest schedule, which belongs to children and belongs to the holiday. It should be a revelry, an escape from everyday life, not the other way around.

And in the anxiety of the full screen, I am also very lucky to meet "Tea Ah No. 2 Middle School".

It's not greasy, it's not preachy, and it doesn't have so many scary gimmicks. It just wants to make you smile.

As Chen Liaoyu, the general director of "China Qitan", said, when domestic animations are pursuing height, "Tea Ah Erzhong" is the only movie that puts down its body and makes everyone laugh.

Fortunately, there are people who want nothing from you but want you to be happy.