The last theatrical film at the end of 2020, "Send You a Little Red Flower" (hereinafter referred to as "Little Red Flower"), was finally released.
This is the second big-screen work of the "four-character brother" Yi Yanqianxi, and the second film of the new "Mou Girl" Liu Haocun.
At the same time, this is also the second in director Han Yan's "Life Trilogy", in 2015, Han Yan directed the first part of the series "Get Out!" "Tumor Jun" won the "Golden Angel Award" at the 11th Sino-US Film Festival, and represented Chinese mainland in the best foreign language film at the 88th Academy Awards.
These labels on "Little Red Flower" have made it gain great attention and expectations. And its performance really lived up to expectations.
The film officially premiered at 18:00 on December 31, but 20 hours before the screening, the total pre-sale box office had already exceeded 200 million, and only 33 minutes after the release, the real-time total box office broke 200 million, then broke 300 million at 6 o'clock, and broke 400 million at 21 o'clock.
There is no doubt that "Send You a Little Red Flower" made a great start to 2021 with the box office.
And in addition to the eye-catching box office performance, the reputation of "Little Red Flower" is not inferior, and the Douban open score is 8.0, currently 7.7.
However, if you watch this movie with the expectation of Douban 8 points, I think many viewers will want to refund the ticket after watching it:
Like "Calm Wind and Waves", the actors perform well, but the script does not deserve them
Such a good box office and word of mouth are good New Year's Eve file, why is there a polarized word of mouth? The answer is simple: expectations are too high.
To be fair, "Little Red Flower" is not a bad film, and there must be a passing score, but it is not excellent, and the words to evaluate it in one sentence are:
Dog blood and routines fly together, and true feelings and sensationalism coexist.
Why there is such a conclusion, let's elaborate on it below.
Note: The following is for movies only and contains spoilers.
01 Misplaced Focus Theme: Anti-Cancer? NO！ Love? YES！
Judging from the introduction and publicity of the film, the theme of "Little Red Flower" is anti-cancer, and through wei Yihang and Ma Xiaoyuan, the two teenagers, it tells the story between two teenagers with cancer and their respective families.
Thematically, it wants to continue Get Out! The discussion of the value of life in "Tumor Jun".
But the first thing that people notice in "Little Red Flower" is the love in the film, and it can even be said that the main line of the story is around love, but the routine of this love story is easy to guess and bloody.
At the beginning of the film, Wei Yihang, played by Yi Qianxi, underwent craniotomy, and after the operation, he was a complete "lost" child.
He labeled himself an "abnormal person", did not like to deal with people, had no friends, lost interest in life, and completely wrapped himself up.
On the contrary, Ma Xiaoyuan, played by Liu Haocun, is a positive, optimistic, and active girl, she enjoys life, dares to take risks, and at the age of 5, she is already a second-grade cancer, and it seems that nothing can beat her.
Young boys and girls with contrasting personalities can almost start from the beginning of their encounters, and the story can be seen at a glance. They meet at the memorial service, then they become joyful enemies, then they accompany each other, and finally they redeem each other.
The previous emotional development of the two has both the shyness and ignorance of the young boy and girl's love sinus, the boldness and bravery after expressing their hearts to each other, and the inseparability on the line of life and death.
There is shyness, there is romance, there is laughter, there are tears, and the best and worst sides of love are all seen.
But the problem is that this movie about cancer patients should not just tell a beautiful and moving love story.
Of course, "Little Red Flower" may be an opportunity to use love as an opportunity for Wei Yihang to change, because of the emergence of Ma Xiaoyuan, he wants to change, to himself, to life.
In fact, the film does show that he went to college at the end of the film and started studying, and then had his first solo trip.
In fact, compared with the main line of love, the portrayal of the family line that gives way to the love line is one of the highlights of the movie.
For example, Wei Yihang and his parents quarreled and then reconciled, because he wanted to save money and Ma Xiaoyuan to go with Ma Xiaoyuan to find the lake in his mind, he did not hesitate to sacrifice his body to try medicine to make money, after being discovered by his father, the two broke out into an argument.
The phrase "I might as well die looking at you like this" became the last straw that crushed his father, who always seemed happy and gave him a slap.
After that slap, Wei Jiang found Wei Yihang, who had run away from home, at Wu Xiaoming's house, and he did not have the anger he had before, but humbly explained the order in which he took the medicine.
His trembling hands, the tears that he suddenly couldn't hold back, and the sentence "After you are sick, what Dad is most afraid of hearing is a 'death' word."
I believe that people who watched the film did not break down here without tears, and the parents recorded the day of the simulated son's death in the second half of the film is really too "foul", which should be the part of the movie that should be portrayed with a lot of ink.
But it is a pity that there are too few such real and empathetic parts of the family drama.
02 The illogical male protagonist, the female protagonist who has become a tool man, and the supporting roles of each of them are highlights
Looking at the whole film, you will find that this is actually a "big male protagonist" movie, and all the plots in the movie revolve around Wei Yihang.
He lost his life, and then met Ma Xiaoyuan, so he learned to face life optimistically.
He was ashamed of his parents, and then there were several conflict scenes, and finally embraced the family again under the guidance of Wu Xiaoming.
However, because too much time is spent portraying love, the contrast between before and after is not well shown.
And Ma Xiaoyuan, the heroine, is even more as a tool person, her early sunshine enthusiasm, confidence and optimism is to reflect Wei Yihang's decadence.
In order to let Wei Yihang regain his strength and enjoy life, she took him to experience the beauty of life, showed him that ordinary people also have sufferings, and taught him to feel the bitterness and bitterness of love.
Finally, when Wei Yihang plucked up enough courage to open his heart, he transformed from a cancer patient who was "unwilling" to be alive to a cancer patient who was full of hope for life.
Since the male protagonist has been perfectly transformed, he needs to show his "role" after the transformation.
So Ma Xiaoyuan was diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer, and the originally optimistic person was immediately defeated by the pain, because she needed to use her funeral to set off Wei Yihang's strength and bravery.
Originally, Ma Xiaoyuan also had a place to play, the story of his mother, the story of being sick at the age of 5, but the film did not mention it at all.
Compared with the story of the male and female protagonists, which is simple to no suspense, the supporting roles in the movie are all highlights, which is also the surprise of the movie.
First of all, "Little Red Flower" portrays three typical parents, including Wei Yihang's parents' kind of big and small type, Arima Xiaoyuan's father's optimistic and positive type, and the silent companionship of the little girl's father, who only appears 3 times in the whole film.
Wei Yihang's parents are the most typical category, they are so ordinary that they can no longer be ordinary, and the starting point of everything they say and do is for the good of their children.
Because the child needs money for treatment, the things in the family are not replaced all year round, and the mother will pick vegetable leaves at the vegetable market every day after work, in order to save five yuan of parking fees and security guards.
In order to make more money, Dad secretly drove a special car every day to earn extra money, he made a stomach problem and was unwilling to spend money on examination and treatment, and the mobile phone was old and reluctant to replace it with a new one.
Their happiness and happiness are with the existence of their son Wei Yihang, and when the relationship between Wei Yihang and Ma Xiaoyuan develops smoothly and they also begin to face life optimistically, they will also have their own small pleasures, such as whether their son will go out to make a bet.
Ma Xiaoyuan's father, Lao Ma, is positive and optimistic to the point that he is an old child, he will secretly smoke behind his daughter's back, and he will also learn magic tricks to make her happy.
After learning that his daughter's condition had recurred, he suddenly changed from an old child to an old father.
In fact, the contrast between the old horse before and after is very poignant, but the time left for their family to unfold the story is really too little.
Equally moving is the father, who has only appeared 3 times.
He has no name in the movie, and the only pictures we are left with are a bowl of braised beef rice, a wig bought for his daughter, and a figure sitting in front of the hospital door crying.
In addition, Wu Xiaoming, played by Yue Yunpeng, is the leader of the group of patients, who came to a strange city in order to treat his lover's illness, but he did not expect that his lover, who had been working hard to live, chose to commit suicide because of the recurrence of the disease diagnosis.
The obscure identity of him and his lover is also a surprising point in the film.
It is worth mentioning that almost all the acting skills in the film are online, and although the choice of supporting roles is from many comedians, there is no sense of comedy.
Yue Yunpeng does not have the smell of a cross-talk actor, and the part of sharing his story on the rooftop is still very impressive.
Yi Qianxi's acting skills are also steady and steady, in the early stages, he is fully backed by the whole time, bangs cover the eyes, no need to look at people, the tone is always low, it seems to be ready to say goodbye to the world at any time.
Because of the change of role in the middle and late stages, it can be seen that he is sunny and happy, like an 18-year-old boy should have.
However, it is obvious in the film that he is still very picky about the opponent actors, and there is still a difference in the state when playing Gao Yalin who plays his father and the new girl.
03 The source of the story is life, but it is still "high" in life after all
In fact, director Han Yan did a better job of grasping emotions than the previous work "Get Out!" Tumor Jun" should be good. In the process of watching, the movie experience of laughing and tears is also true.
It is undeniable that the film has made great efforts in portraying the fight against cancer groups, and cancer is also the theme of implementation.
Whether it is the portrayal of cancer patients in the hospital, or the scenes in the group of patients encouraging each other, including Wei Yihang's sincere confession through wine on a rainy night, the words directly poke the hearts of the anti-cancer group.
These images, these lines, are impossible for someone who has not deeply understood this group of patients to write.
There is also a detailed portrayal of love, but also let people have a sense of involvement, such as adding people WeChat to see the avatar first, and then zoom in to see the selfie, pay attention to Weibo to choose to secretly pay attention, even the details of jealousy are very few men and girls.
This is also a good part of the "true feelings" rendering in the film, because it is real.
But there are also "good intentions" in the film, and many stories that are higher than life have been created, in which the setting of "parallel worlds" and some sensational and embarrassing lines make this story that should be true become "three feet off the ground".
Even for the sake of lightness and laughter, it is acceptable for male and female protagonists to play simulated adventure games around the world in the city, and watch Ma Xiaoyuan play with all kinds of uncontrolled people.
But when Wei Yihang drank the "sweet and sour water" and said to Ma Xiaoyuan at the other end of the video: "I drank this, you are my person", it immediately brought people back to the era of the 80s romance overlord novel.
There are also movies that spend a lot of time telling about the distant place that does not know whether it is the future or the past, whether it is fantasy or reality.
By the blue lake, the girl in the white dress, and the teenager in the white shirt and jeans, the picture is as beautiful as a fairy tale, but I did not expect that in the end it was to sublimate the love service.
In short, the problem of "Little Red Flower" is still the script, and the screenwriter must carry the pot.
The theme of the original movie is good, and there are many ways to tell the story of a protagonist who is a cancer patient.
Unfortunately, "Little Red Flower" picked the worst one.
Bluestone Film Editorial Office | Old Meng
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