Film Name: 你好，李焕英 / Hi, Mom
I didn’t expect to be slapped in the face, and it was the hardest slap in the face.
Before the opening of the Spring Festival slot, I am not optimistic about the movie is “Hi, Mom”, even if its pre-sale results are good, even if it has Jialing, Shen Teng, the same name sketches, and many other “comedian / comedy elements” endorsement stand, but experience tells me that such a movie is often more packaging than actual, or holding some kind of “self-motivated right” hard landing. “self-motivated correctness” hard landing …… who would have thought it could do ‘the first word-of-mouth in the Spring Festival slot, box office will be more than ‘Detective Chinatown 3 Who would have thought that it could achieve such fame and fortune as “No.1 in Chinese New Year” and “will surpass Detective Chinatown 3″ in box office”?
It’s not a bad beating this time. With “Hi, Mom”, Jialing conveys a sense of “sincerity” that has been rare in recent years, a sincerity that is not only honest and trustworthy in terms of creative attitude and self-interest, but also an effective empathy that is down-to-earth and empathetic.
Having moved people to this point, the rest of the problems seem to be insignificant.
[Friendly reminder: there will be spoilers below, so read at your discretion].
There’s one thing to be said for the fact that, to some extent, my earlier prediction about Hi, Mom was right; it’s really loose and plodding, and lacks a clear backbone structure.
As a newcomer director, Jia Ling makes all the mistakes that skit-to-film adaptations are prone to, such as piecemeal baggage of laughs, a sense of camera work that immediately loses its color when removed from the characters and the main scene, and a rhythmic imbalance that’s incoherent and lacking in scheduling, to name a few.
The movie is a clichéd crossover story (and there are plenty of similar Chinese and foreign films out there), and Hi, Mom moves quickly into the 1981 story line after the basic instructions, without even the bare minimum of embellishment, which is fortunate that most of the audience didn’t care about, or else it would have been another minus point.
Before the final climax, the film’s plot is advanced by a combination of paragraph-style “sketches”, I probably looked at my cell phone three or four times to determine the progress of time during the viewing process, which is usually the case when watching other movies is to wait until the end of the cell phone out …… see the film’s This movie has a sense of incoherence and patchwork.
But at the same time, Hi, Mom is funny as hell.
This is probably the unique advantage of the comedian Jia Ling, who is a sketch actress and a grassroots comedian who is close to the public. Under the filter of the 1980s era, the film shakes a lot of baggage very naturally, such as the joy of buying a TV set, the twists and turns of a volleyball match, and the shyness and leaps of joy of going on a blind date, coupled with the use of sufficiently lifelike, grounded details, (such as the box of love beans of Shen Guanglin), and the results of the laughs are very good.
The most masterful of all is the duet at the cultural performance, which is rich in laughs and has a strong sense of hierarchy, from the initial awkwardness of the crowd not knowing the punchline, to the rebound after suppressing and holding back laughter, to the factory manager leaving the stage, when the performance is getting better and better, and progressively at the same time, it also incorporates a lot of points that can make people smile, such as the host’s self-centered zealousness, the factory manager’s inexpressible authority, and the repeated horizontal jumps and changes in Shen Guanglin’s face. etc.
It’s worth noting that this scene is more than a mere laugh – combined with the tears in Lee Hwan-young’s eyes from her laughter at the end, it’s even more evocative of the aftermath.
Of course, even if “Hi, Mom” were to include a touching family bond, it would still be a sensational comedy with the right ingredients. …… The movie is precious in its unrepeatable, one-of-a-kind “true feelings” because the person it remembers is the director and director of the movie. The film’s main character is director and star Jialing’s mother, Li Huanying, who is the subject of the film’s nostalgia.
That said, Jialing’s film also features many common characteristics of her mother-daughter relationship with Li Huanying: the impression that her mother has always been a housewife, her naughty and unruly childhood/teenage years, and her mother’s tolerant and pampering demeanor while scolding and blaming her, all of which will undoubtedly poke at countless people’s soft hearts.
“I’ve been your daughter for a time and made you happy for a time without doing it.” In the context of children who want to be raised by their parents, the central driving force of the plot of Hi, Mom is Jia Xiaoling’s desire to make her mother, who has yet to give birth to her child, happy, and her attempts to get Li Huanying to hook up with the son of the factory manager, Shen Guanglin, in exchange for a “better” life.
The evolution of this motivation is not only tragic, but also has the characteristics of many parents and children who have thought, “What if I had married ***…? What if my parents hadn’t given birth to me…?” is broad and universal.
In the face of this common problem, the mother-daughter drinking scene has already given the answer, Jia Xiaoling hopes that Li Huanying’s future children can be “successful”, highly educated, good jobs, and earn a lot of money, while Li Huanying only hope that the child can be “healthy and happy” on the line.
And then through Li Huanying once again choose Jia Wentian to get married, and then Jia Xiaoling realize that these days with Li Huanying, is the same travel back to become young mother, the whole film reached the climax, because we all understand, Li Huanying is with the actual action, fully proved that “even if you re-live again, I still want to be your Jia Xiaoling’s mother! “I still want to be your mom, Jia Xiaoling.
People’s hearts are made of flesh, I believe that as long as there is some empathy, the existence of family love, will be touched by this scene, even if some hate to be sensationalized viewers (such as me), in the understanding of the authenticity of this touching, but also had to accept the film actually exists a strong endogenous force.
As an aside, I think 30% of the credit for the success of Hi, Mom goes to Zhang Xiaofei’s Lee Hwan-young, whose portrayal and interpretation in the film maximizes the effect of the film.
Most people think of Zhang Xiaofei (if at all) as “a good-looking actress” in comedy sketches, with an unimpressive resume of movie appearances (most of them in bad movies), and even as Lee Hwan-young in the original Hi, Mom skit, her performance wasn’t that impressive! ……
However, when put into a movie, where the camera can easily focus and zoom in, certain qualities of Zhang Xiaofei’s body are instead stimulated and released. Her square face, slender body, and generous character image is very much in line with the social aesthetics of the 1980s and 1990s, and together with her two twisted pigtails, plain or flowery long dresses, constant smile, and ordinary working life, she is even more in line with the “mother’s” character as remembered by or fantasized about by countless people when her mother was young. When so many people shouted “I want to call my mom when I see Zhang Xiaofei”, I knew the movie “Hi, Mom” was a success.
Jialing’s success is in fact full of chance, the aura of the special period of the Spring Festival, the cross-disciplinary experience of a new director, the unique and common feelings for mothers that contributed to the tears, etc. …… I even think that Jialing belongs to the peak of her debut, and she has just become “the highest-grossing female director in China’s history”, so she is not the only female director who has become the most popular in China’s box office. She has just become “the highest-grossing female director in Chinese movie history”, and she will probably not be able to produce any better movies in the future.
However, there is a certain inevitability in Jialing’s success. Her simple, sincere, ordinary, open-minded, grounded, and non-greasy character gives Hi, Mom a sense of destiny that “Heaven rewards the diligent”, and this “purity” is precisely the spiritual quality that many experienced or talented directors have forgotten. This “purity” is a spiritual quality that many experienced and talented directors have forgotten.
In the end, Hi, Mom is just a good warm comedy, but if you look at it from a higher perspective, I’m afraid its significance is much more than just a movie.
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