Wen | Ling Fox Bo Guang
Stephen Chow's role as the "King of Comedy" in Mandarin is a recognized thing.
Also because of the success of Stephen Chow's comedy style, many comedians were more or less influenced by Stephen Chow.
Including these new generation comedy teams such as Dapeng, Professor Yi Xiaoxing, Bai Ke, Chen Xiang at 6:30 and so on.
Others include Dumpling, the director of "Nezha's Demon Boy Descending", and the director of the animation "Assassin Wu Liuqi".
Including "Extreme Occupation", which broke the box office record of Korean comedy films, its director Lee Byung-hyun made no secret of saying that he was deeply influenced by Stephen Chow.
And so many comedians who are affected by Stephen Chow, there is only one successor who is recognized by netizens and Stephen Chow himself.
——He is Lu Zhengyu!
Stephen Chow's number one fan and the first generation of Chinese online comedians
To be fair, it is the wishful thinking of the media and netizens to say that Lu Zhengyu is Zhou Xingchi's successor.
Because Lu Zhengyu is a comedian who learns the most similar to Zhou Xingchi and learns quite successfully.
Chinese audiences love Zhou Xingchi too much, plus Zhou Xingchi later used Lu Zhengyu himself, so everyone called Lu Zhengyu zhou Xingchi's "successor".
And Lu Zhengyu's works "Hip Hop Quartet", "Peerless Master" and so on.
I believe that many Chinese netizens are very familiar with it, and I will not repeat it here.
If you are not familiar with it, let's say one thing: he is just a child!
Since the movie "Peerless Master", Lu Zhengyu has come with the latest online comedy "Big Hero Lu Xiaoyu's Sunset Red Team".
The male protagonist, Lu Xiaoyu, was caught and interrogated at Yamen, and there were still two hours to be killed.
Under the interrogation of three "confused" headhunters, it turned out that Lu Xiaoyu had killed his parents and was suspected of being a member of the Demon Cult.
Lu Xiaoyu's father was a blacksmith and his mother was a cross-stitch worker.
They want Lu Xiaoyu to strike iron or embroider cross-stitch, but Lu Xiaoyu's dream is to be a hero like Feng Qingbai.
The village where Lu Xiaoyu is located is called "Xuanju Village", which means a village like an ant. The villagers of the whole village are selfish and cowardly, and they are bullied by the next village and cannot look up.
Holding Lu Xiaoyu who wants to be a hero in this way, his personality and handling of people are also in a state of repeated jumping.
Then, With the encouragement of Li Jiangang's younger sister, Lu Xiaoyu attempted to steal his parents and leave.
As a result, it was found that his parents had a black shadow in a big battle that night, and in the confusion, Lu Xiaoyu fainted and woke up, his parents were killed, and then he was caught by the head and executed.
At the critical moment, Lu Xiaoyu was rescued, and when she woke up again, the heroine "Thrush" appeared.
Thrush told Lu Xiaoyu that this was where the Demon Sect's "Great Demon King" was located, and lu Xiaoyu wanted to avenge his parents, and he could kill the Great Demon King directly.
Lu Xiaoyu was too intimidated to move, and the thrush let Lu Xiaoyu drink and be bold.
Lu Xiaoyu woke up drunk the next day, and then with the Great Demon King, the Demon Sect Ame and the Master Who was caught in the Demon Sect. Because last night Lu Xiaoyu was drunk and had an emotional entanglement.
At this time, the Great Demon King was about to wake up, and Lu Xiaoyu repeatedly jumped between the three, and finally revealed the secret.
Lu Xiaoyu was caught by the Kun Gong Sect, and the Great Demon King was the White Brow of the Kun Gong Sect, and the Thrush was his granddaughter.
This time was a test for Lu Xiaoyu, and Lu Xiaoyu's too much encouragement passed the test.
Bai Mei casually taught Lu Xiaoyu some kung fu, and asked Lu Xiaoyu to take thrush and eagle brother to four places to get the Demon Sect fragments and get a key to open the door of the Demon Realm——
The clichéd "Peerless Master" and the tedious web comedy
Lu Zhengyu knew when he first caught fire, and his early works were all seen and quite liked.
After the release of the movie "Peerless Master" in 2017, Lu Zhengyu disappeared for a few years.
In January 2020, Lu Zhengyu was eliminated with the variety show "Happy Comedians" with the fragment of "The Sunset Red Team of the Peerless Master".
Although it was a bit awkward to watch that clip at the time, given that it was only a clip that did not see the whole picture, I still held an attitude of expectation.
On January 21, 2021, "The Sunset Red Team of Lu Xiaoyu" was launched, and there are currently several episodes of evaluation: this is a mediocre network comedy that is old-fashioned and fried its own cold rice, full of various tedious comedy elements.
It can't be said to be unattractive, but it is far from other excellent Chinese comedies; even compared with Lu Zhengyu's own hip-hop trilogy and "Peerless Master", the gap is visible to the naked eye.
1. Clichéd themes and narrative settings
"Big Hero Lu Xiaoyu's Sunset Red Team" is the latest one of "Peerless Masters".
"Lu Xiaoyu, the Great Hero of the Peerless Master", appeared in 2014, in the hot atmosphere of the "traffic economy" at that time, Lu Zhengyu used the model of Hong Kong comedy and Hong Kong film and television drama to package some of the social cores of the era at that time.
Stephen Chow's comedy and Hong Kong martial arts drama are unusually deep throughout the Chinese-speaking region.
The production mode of "Peerless Master" is the retro one, and Chinese audiences have a sense of familiarity. He also uses the production mode of the old era to interpret the core of the story of the new era, and various comedy elements are old-school but novel.
Eventually reached the existence of a postmodern deconstructed comedy.
If you start from the Chinese network comedy short drama, with Dapeng's "Di Si Men" and "Never Expected" called Beast Yi Xiaoxing, it is called the three peaks of network comedy.
Lu Zhengyu's set has been used since 2013 and has been used for nearly a decade now.
The first time you use it is novel, the second time you use it is a classic reproduction, and the third time you use it can easily become fried cold rice, which inherently has the risk of causing the audience's aesthetic fatigue.
Of course not absolutely!
If you use it well, it is "emotional killing", and if you use it poorly, it is fried cold rice.
This brings us to the next point.
2) The story, theme, and setting are completely abandoned
When recounting the plot of the story earlier, I believe that many viewers should see it.
This drama is a cowardly teenager who has longed for the goal of Hongda since childhood, suddenly encountered a change and then descended from heaven to a big task, formed a team to fight monsters and upgrades in the middle of the way, and then found that the murderer was himself, and finally overcame his own final sublimation of the story -
This theme, setting and framework is very, very old, and a lot of Japanese teenage manga are basically this way.
The whole framework of this drama is not to say, and it is the same as the big movie "Never Expected" called Beast Yi Xiaoyi (there is also a "Journey to the West" skin over there).
Of course, now that the narrative routines of popular literature and film and television dramas all over the world have been played, the key is to play something new and contrasting.
Lu Xiaoyu's own "Big Hero Lu Xiaoyu" series is a typical network comedy that deconstructs classic narratives play contrasts.
"Big Hero Lu Xiaoyu" is ostensibly the old-school Hong Kong martial arts drama set.
The protagonists, Lu Xiaoyu and Baimei Xueyi, want to become heroes, but Lu Xiaoyu solves the problem of learning not martial arts. Instead, it is to cope with the hot spots and pain points of the times such as bear children in the Spring Festival, drinking during the Spring Festival, facing parents and relatives, etc.
This stark contrast, combined with subtle comedic elements, is stunning.
"The Sunset Red Team of the Great Hero Lu Xiaoyu" has no "classic deconstruction", and the setting and interaction of the villagers in the village are exactly the same as the movie version of "Never Expected", as well as his idol Zhou Xingchi's "Journey to the West".
Originally, the framework and setting were new, but the key is that its narrative advancement is also very mediocre.
We know that he will certainly be bullied and looked down upon by the villagers in the beginning, his parents will be killed, then suddenly taken away and tested, and then he will be ordered to go on the road -
(The various transitions throughout the play are very abrupt, and one meme is used over and over again).)
The whole drama is set in a framework and clichéd, and the narrative is mediocre and boring.
In the end, you can only use various funny paragraphs and laugh points to promote the narrative, shape the characters, and explain the connotations.
3, laughter and stems will not work, it will be finished
To be fair, "The Sunset Red Team of the Great Hero Lu Xiaoyu" has some laughs and stems.
But when it is put into the whole play, it can neither support the narrative, nor can it stand up the characters.
Because most of the laughs are so ordinary and they are constantly repeated.
The first time you look at the cold and laugh, but you really can't stand the repeated use of a stem in the same scene, which eventually brings a serious sense of aesthetic fatigue to the audience.
Regarding clichés and repetitions, here are two examples.
One is the cliché of laughter.
The villagers of "Genju Village" who are the first to be promoted here are bullied there by the village next door.
The same mountain village villagers with the same variety of sentient beings, the same villagers who feel awkward in their acting skills.
But compare it with the villagers of "Journey to the West to Descend the Devil", and even the big movie version of "Never Expected".
In terms of laughter in this drama, there is only embarrassment left.
The second is the repetition of laughter.
Here we are going to first promote the so-called "Great Demon King" there.
Lu Xiaoyu was worried that he would not be able to defeat the three sides and wanted to take revenge, so he jumped four or five times at Shi Tai, Ah Mei and the Great Demon King.
Some terriers can still laugh, and some terriers are not funny in the first place. And the original somewhat funny memes have also been worn out in the case of repeated use.
As for the other shortcomings of this drama, I will not repeat it.
End
Lu Zhengyu is a well-known thing that Zhou Xingchi's iron fans.
He has started from "Hip Hop Quartet" and "The Great Hero Lu Xiaoyu's Peerless Master" and other web comedy shorts.
He also showed a high level of comedic talent while imitating Stephen Chow.
Lu Zhengyu's last movie version of "Peerless Master" is the same as the problem of this "Big Hero Lu Xiaoyu's Sunset Red Team".
This is not even just a problem of Lu Zhengyu alone, but a problem of a large number of online comedians.
This web series has a limited duration, and of course it is okay to rely on stacking paragraphs. However, the film and television drama is longer, the setting and framework are all imitated, and the narrative characters and laugh points are all piled up by the paragraphs.
You are not a god, and laughter will always be outdated, boring and not funny.
The movie version of "Never Expected" called Beast Yi Xiaoxing is also this problem.
Lu Zhengyu's movie "Peerless Master" and "The Sunset Red Team of Lu Xiaoyu" are the same problem.
On the contrary, "Pancake Man" Dapeng also had this problem, and later changed to a different theme of "Sewing Machine Band" much better, and now people still go to make literary films.
I personally dare to assert that Dapeng will definitely rise to a higher level if he re-shoots comedy.
Finally, Bo Guangjun also thought about Lu Zhengyu.
Lu Zhengyu should not repeatedly toss the IP of "Peerless Master" (perhaps because the box office of the "Peerless Master" movie is not good, in order to hype his most successful IP for market heat).
He should expand "Wedding Photos of the Hip Hop Trilogy," or "The UFO Witness of the Hip Hop Trilogy," into a feature film.
Even if the story and theme are the same, as long as the story plot is smooth and the comedic elements are combined.
The former will be an excellent urban romantic comedy, and the latter will be a science fiction comedy rarely seen in Chinese movies.
(At present, there is only one domestic science fiction comedy movie "Crazy Alien", and the theme core of "UFO Witness" does not even lose at all).
In this case, it will definitely be stronger than repeatedly frying "Peerless Master" now.
Finally, I hope that Lu Zhengyu can continue to work hard after this network comedy!
ps: "The Famous Female Character "Li Jiangang" in the Central Plains IP of the Great Hero Lu Xiaoyu."
The original work is played by Hunan Satellite TV female host Yoyo, and the new version is chen Xiaoqiao, the heroine of "Hip Hop Quartet", played by Taiwanese actress Yang Qingxuan.
After the end of the "Hip Hop Quartet", the two did not cooperate again, and this time it was a return of feelings.
But "Lu Xiaoyu, the Great Hero of the Peerless Master", is more popular, and many viewers do not know her, and now they only know that the original yoyo version of Li Jiangang has been replaced.