Northeast version of "Wulin Gaiden", wulin version of "Country Love"

Recently, there is a very popular short video, telling Zhao Benshan to the apprentice Song Xiaofeng to tell the play, using "stepping on the empty stool" to create laughter, Zhao Benshan demonstrated three times, each time it is hilarious, but the apprentice always can't get the point, the performance is almost meaningful.

There is a message at the bottom of the word, comedy is not in the people. Everyone can use comedy techniques, but how to use it just right, how to use it to master the rhythm, but it all depends on the individual.

The reason why Zhao Benshan can amuse the audience with his performance is due to experience and talent.

Zhao Benshan brought a lot of happiness to the audience, but after 2013, he withdrew from the sketch stage. In the following ten years, except for his appearance in the "Country Love" and "Liu Laogen" series, people rarely saw him.

Unexpectedly, recently, he returned with a costume sitcom - "The Legend of the Magpie Daomen".

"The Legend of Que Daomen" is extremely high, Zhao Benshan is not only the first male protagonist, but also plays two roles, playing Ximen Changhai and Ximen Chang in this pair of twin brothers with completely different personalities.

After its launch, the reputation of "The Legend of Que Daomen" soared, scoring a high score of 8.1 on Douban, becoming the most well-known comedy work in 2023.

To be fair, although the quality of the episodes themselves is not bad, this rating is still a bit inflated. Its false height mainly comes from the "layer by layer" outside the play: there is the public mood of "the return of the mountain", and there is also the recollection and remembrance of costume sitcoms.

The costume sitcom is a long-lost theme, and 2006's "The Legend of Wulin" was plated by the audience. And the wonderful combination of "Zhao Benshan + costume sitcom" evokes the audience's nostalgia for the TV era of intensive content, and makes people smell the "smell of the past".

The story background of "The Legend of Que Daomen" is set in an overhead era that imitates the Ming Dynasty. At that time, the imperial court was corrupt, eunuchs were dictatorial, and there were people who infiltrated the Liaodong realm to burn, kill and loot, and the common people lived in misery.

The hero Haojie of the eastern Liaoning region spontaneously organized an anti-yoko alliance to kill the yokou and traitors. The head of the Magpie Dao Gate, Ximen Changhai, is the backbone of this anti-Yan alliance. In order to complete the plan of resisting the Yan and not let the enemy detect it, Ximen Changhai found his twin brother Ximen Changzai, and asked the other party to impersonate himself and stay behind in the Magpie Dao Gate.

Ximen Chang was a timid and fearful cook, and he was initially reluctant to accept his brother's request, until the other party lured him with "finding a wife", and he reluctantly agreed.

Que Daomen is a declining sect, and there are only a few of them: there is Hao Meng (played by Cheng Ye), the stupid and stupid big apprentice, Hao Meng's wife Ye Siniang (played by Ge Shanshan), the reckless and impulsive second apprentice Zhao Dezhu (played by Song Xiaofeng), and Ximen Changhai's daughter Ximen Rou (played by Li Xiaohe), and Jiang Yulang (played by Wen Song), who later joined.

In the Magpie Dao Gate, Chief Ximen has changed from a palm to a sect leader. He originally wanted to keep a low profile and muddle through, but unexpectedly the storm followed, giving birth to a series of ridiculous stories of rivers and lakes.

Although many characters in "The Legend of Que Daomen" have foreign four-character names, similar to Ximen Changhai, Ximen Changzai, Gongsun Lirong, Shangguan Xiuqin, Xuanyuan Jinfeng and the like, it is still wrapped in its bones is still a Northeast comedy or an "Ivory Mountain Story", and has not separated from the "Tieling Universe" of Zhao Jiaban. As Li Xueqin said, "The end of the universe is in Tieling", and the end of Zhao's comedy is also in Tieling.

In addition to Zhao Benshan, the actors in the play are also familiar faces of Zhao Jiaban: Song Xiaobao, Song Xiaofeng, Wen Song, Yang Shulin, Cheng Ye, Zhao Haiyan...

However, as a costume drama, "The Legend of Que Daomen" has added a lot of martial arts elements.

To be honest, I was surprised to be able to see Zhao Benshan playing with a big knife. What's even more unexpected is that he not only played, but also played well.

This is mainly thanks to the addition of director Wu Di. As a world martial arts champion and an international athlete, Wu Di filmed the action scenes heartily and beautifully composed, and the fight scenes between Ximen Changhai and the masked man at the beginning, and the fight scenes between Ximen Changhai and Dongying people when competing for the lord of the martial arts alliance are all exciting.

But what's more exciting is the story. To sum it up in two words: funny, cook.

The nested comedy techniques of "The Legend of Magpie Daomen" are not new: identity dislocation, contrast, chicken and duck talk, homophonic memes, jokes and allegory, and so on. But the victory is cleverly used, plus the actor's acting skills are online, and the "laughing fruit" is achieved.

For example, there is a place in the play where Shangguan Xiuqin kidnapped two apprentices of Que Daomen, and then went to the door to find Ximen Chang asking for ransom, but Ximen Chang mistakenly thought that the other party was a blind date introduced by the matchmaker, and the two "talked with chickens and ducks", and launched hilarious conversations on different channels.

Uncle Jiezi fell in love with Gongsun Lirong at first sight, and set candles in the courtyard to confess: You are so beautiful, love you until you are old. As a result, a demon wind hit, the candle was extinguished by half, and the words put out became "Hello Old", leaving Jezi speechless and choking.

In addition, "The Legend of the Magpie Daomen" is also mixed with a lot of nonsensical baggage. One of the most typical is the unexpected contemporary elements. For example, Zhao Dezhu has a good impression of Ximen Rou, and in order to pursue Ximen Rou, he made himself a famous family, and the famous door he chose was "Zhao Benshan".

In addition, for the rumored discord between the master and apprentice of the Zhao family class, "The Legend of the Magpie Daomen" also gives some specious similes and metaphors. Lines full of deep meaning such as "Zhao Si died in infancy" and "It is a person but not personnel".

Even others were not spared, and were ridiculed by the people in the play - "Like Guo's apprentice, Guo Jiadian, he will choke him enough." ”

It is said that the weapon of comedy is irony. In "The Legend of the Magpie Dao Gate", the irony of this sword is also used perfectly.

For example, in order to repair the Tibetan scripture pavilion, the Shaolin Temple launched a "black box", each black box contains different martial arts secrets. Ximen Chang opened a martial arts secret book of "Tianshan Tong Grandma", but as a result, his body became smaller after training, and he couldn't go back. In order to change back to the original form, he could only keep smoking the black box until he drew the second half of the secret code of "Tianshan Tong Mu". The black box in the play corresponds to the blind box in reality. The series uses this setting to satirize the blind box chaos.

In addition, "The Legend of the Magpie Daomen" also ridiculed various strange situations in the entertainment industry.

For example, hype, in order to recruit apprentices to sell classes, Mr. Storyteller put Chief Ximen and the Five Poisons Sect Leader together to bundle the hype, and as a result, the Five Poisons Sect Leader not only did not get angry, but also visited the door to chase together to "fry CP".

For example, in the draft, capital manipulates the draft behind the scenes, and the ranking of the competition is clearly priced.

In the play, Ximen Changhai and Ximen Chang are both twin brothers and mirror images of each other. From their own perspectives, they reflected two completely different rivers and lakes: Ximen Changhai saw a responsible and moral rivers and lakes; What Chief Ximen is seeing is a deceitful and deceitful rivers and lakes.

These are the two sides of the same body of the river and lake, and the two sides of human nature.

However, compared with Zhao Benshan's early sketches, "The Legend of Que Daomen" still has some reservations, and it stops at point. Therefore, although the plot of "The Legend of the Magpie Daomen" has many allusions to the real world, in retrospect, it "seems to have said and seems to have said nothing", which is very shrewd.

But even so, "The Legend of Que Daomen" is still a high-quality costume sitcom, funny, and it is enough.

Steel