Film Name: 交换人生 / Five Hundred Miles
Five Hundred Miles” should be this year’s Spring Festival in the ‘family viewing’ of the highest overall index of a movie, the core of the family comedy, attached to the setting of the fantasy hypothesis, watching the ‘threshold’ is the lowest.
The reality is that Five Hundred Miles is light and breezy enough to be watched in its entirety, with no surprises or unnecessary action, moderate but not cheap laughs, and a heartwarming and universal theme, making it a passable enough family-friendly film.
No matter where the starting point is, you can’t go wrong when you put it above family.
[Friendly reminder: there will be spoilers below].
The story of Five Hundred Miles is very simple: low self-esteem and introvert Lu Xiaogu has a crush on Jin Hao, a female lecturer in healthcare shoes, who is on a blind date with the unscrupulous lawyer Zhongda (though they look more like they are unwillingly getting what they want, and the two don’t have a chance at all), and the jealous Lu can’t help but to go to Zhongda’s trouble, which results in an accidental crossover, where she picks up a pachinko machine, and accidentally exchanged bodies with Zhongda ……
We should all be familiar with this kind of exchange setting, and this kind of movie can even be completely unexplained why this phenomenon occurs, and the whole process can be “no beginning, no end” – as long as the contrast with the normal life of the characters after the swap of the body, and its corresponding comedy The Five Hundred Million Dollars is a great example of a movie that is not just about the characters, but about their lives.
Five Hundred Miles does a pretty good job of this, first and foremost because Lu Xiaogu is surrounded by a group of excellent “comic” family members.
Shayi, whose image as a comedian has become more and more popular in recent years, plays the role of father, Liu Mintao, who is a wavy and dignified person, plays the role of mother, Wu Yanshu, who plays the role of grandmother, and Yang En, who is starting to emerge as a quirky girl, plays the role of sister – the four family members are characterized by their own image, which stabilizes their persona. stabilized their personas and assisted in the first wave of intensive laughs after Lu Xiaogu and Zhongda exchanged bodies.
Of course, the biggest contributor to Five Hundred Miles is still the lead actor Lei Jiayin.
Lei is getting better and better at playing this kind of roles, as he showed in How Long Will I Love U, also directed by Su Lun, a few years ago, and now he even knows how to take advantage of the situation: when he was a black lawyer, he showed the characteristics of his moral appearance, greed, lack of public morality, and self-centeredness, but not so much as to make the audience physically disgusted, and when he played Lu Xiaogu, he was even more familiar with the situation, and he was also very good at it. After the soul of Lu Xiaogu is even more familiar, and goofy, naive, cute and a little gangster flavor, do not have to act, just stand there on the living.
At the same time, Zhang Xiaofei’s Jin Hao is also a very important plus point in Five Hundred Miles, people’s background is already good, and in the film’s costume overall is in accordance with the direction of the generous beauty to go, no intention to play ugly or weird, so combined with the specific story scenes, appropriate to make some awkward or out of control performance, the effect is better, and beautiful and have a Life style.
The rivalry between Lei Jiayin and Zhang Xiaofei constitutes the heaviest and funniest comedy sequence in the first and middle parts of Five Hundred Miles.
Jin Hao initially wants to reject Zhongda, who doesn’t come to electricity, but the situation changes when the other person is replaced by Lu Xiaogu’s personality: Lu Xiaogu, with his worldly adolescent temperament, uses Zhongda’s “de-oiled” body to take Jin Hao to relive the simple happiness that anyone who has been young will miss, so that their relationship heats up dramatically. But then Lu Xiaogu suddenly woke up and thought, “I can’t take advantage of my rival”, so I pushed him away again, achieving the effect of first raising and then depressing (in fact, first raising and then raising again).
By the way, the interlude song “Against the Light” is really a bit of brainwashing, this old song of Sun Yanzi’s first to Jin Hao’s “heavenly” voice to sing out the effect of the program, and then slowly cut back to the original sound, inexplicably fits the seemingly ambiguous but pure love between Lu Xiaogu and Jin Hao atmosphere, coupled with the really good, resulting in my mind is still in the loop of the “Against the Light”! ……
In addition, many guest stars in this segment also brought many highlights, such as Yue Yunpeng’s cab driver, easily reminiscent of his “Yanzi, how can I live without you” famous scene, and I am most impressed with Yang Di’s restaurant waiter, although he himself did not have a very outstanding performance, but very well with the scene! Although Yang Di himself didn’t have a great performance, he matched the scene well with his baggage shaking and line output, which is considered to be of very high quality.
Zhang Yuhao’s role is not imagined, but he put his own part of the completion of a good, inferiority complex shy teenager is still in the middle of the rules, but when it comes to Zhongda personality, his kind of indifference, wry and youthful sense of sophistication but in place, not old, but very suitable for the movie that kind of light comedy sense.
It is also through Zhongda’s choice to become Lu Xiaogu that I gradually realized that the real theme of the movie lies in “returning to the family”.
Zhongda had an unfortunate childhood, his parents were divorced and indifferent to him, which made him envy and long for Lu Xiaogu’s life after a short period of resistance, because in his opinion, Lu Xiaogu has the most precious treasure in the world. …… However, after Zhongda succeeded in his trick, he could not help but use the pinball machine again when he realized his wish to become Lu Xiaogu. Pinball machine, greed makes him eventually become a goose, and this ending also proves that he, who has been traumatized and distorted in his mind, is unable to obtain true happiness.
On the other hand, Lu Xiaogu’s wish when he appeared on the scene was to escape from this “small” family and go to the outside world to pursue a wider world, so much so that his crush on a sister who was more than a decade older than himself felt like a kind of run for freedom……. But the “dreamy start” Zhongda left behind didn’t make him feel much joy. However, the “dream start” left by Zhongda did not let him feel much happiness, the repeated attitude towards Jin Hao, the tragedy of the old people being cheated and so on, all of which only made him look forward to going back to his own family even more.
Therefore, when all the dust settles and the fairy tale comes to an end, Lu Xiaogu, who has returned to himself physically and mentally, can naturally realize that “home is the greatest adventure” and “home is the most beautiful faraway place”.
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