Film Name: 年会不能停 / Johnny Keep Walking
I finally had time to watch the screening of Johnny Keep Walking, and although it wasn’t quite what I expected, overall it was a competent comedy film with both laughs and tears.
Let’s start with a simple conclusion: in terms of ‘laughs’, Johnny Keep Walking is one of the better Chinese comedy films in recent years, except for its story logic, which is still problematic. -The biggest value of the film is that it hits the pain points and grooves of the working population, which is the biggest reason for it to become a dark horse at the box office.
In fact, I personally do not like this film, because its structure is too much like a simple skit, relying on stupid misunderstandings (the production line of blue-collar workers to the headquarters of the group as a gold-collar HR) to set up the film’s biggest dramatic conflict, and then make a bit of far-fetched twists and turns, and finally everyone happily together to make dumplings.
This is just fine, after all, the film was originally for its own theme of the bottle of vinegar and dumplings …… However, even the main character Hu Jianlin, played by Peng, is almost missing the ‘self’, which is a bit unreasonable.
After being transferred to the headquarter by mistake, Hu Jianlin first stirs up trouble in the atmosphere of the company’s preparation for big layoffs as a naive and uneducated batch of workers; the truth is revealed by the middle leaders, and then he quickly learns to be bad and complicit with the leadership, and then he suddenly recovers his original heart and starts to be righteous when his old workmates are laid off collectively. ……
Any one of these do-gooders is fine on its own, but it’s awkward to put them on one person because the shifts are so jarring.
In fact, the three central characters in Johnny Keep Walking all have this problem: Hu Jianlin is a dedicated, simple and honest old bull who eventually returns to his old ways; Ma Jie is a well-doing, submissive, bottom-bouncing, angry man; and Pan Yiran is an outspoken, straightforward and honest donkey ready to overthrow the world of work. -The typical persona of the film is much stronger than the characters, and the gags, jokes, and emotions in the film are also stronger than the story itself.
The film is so eager to build up its characters and express its emotions in order to find empathy with the audience that the deeper impact it should have as a film about the workplace and workers is compromised.
In addition, I would like to say, ‘Johnny Keep Walking’ inside the Zhonghe Group, looks like a spoof of the most popular Internet companies in recent years, but as long as a little more thought, you will find that such a business does not exist, really rely on the real industry started the boss, it is extremely difficult to step on the wind at every step to make such a size of the matrix, and riding on the east wind of the virtual economy of the Internet newcomers In contact with traditional industries and will not have so many constraints ……
In fact, Zhonghe Group is a cohesion of state-owned enterprises, private enterprises and even some of the characteristics of foreign enterprises and the problem of the virtual carrier, big factories, small factories, good companies, bad companies, it has all the problems, if you really want to talk about the sense of immersion, it is not enough to real and concrete …… But the advantage of doing so is that a little bit of everything is dipped, and do not have to worry about being accused of connotation in the Whoever – it connotes all the companies and enterprises that have workplace problems.
As someone who usually surfs the Internet with a high degree of intensity, I can fully feel that Johnny Keep Walking captures the pain points and grooves of the group with the strongest sense of presence and voice on the Internet with great depth and accuracy, and it even touches on some of the workplace phenomena that have always existed, even if it is a bit peripheral to talk about nowadays. Even some of the more peripheral but ever-present phenomena in the workplace are covered.
People are not in the work, the corpse is not eating, rewards and punishments are not clear, perfunctory, good and happy, bribery, taking bribes, cutting corners, enrichment, formalism, wastefulness, deception of the top and the bottom, the public is against the will of the people, the collusion, the protection of the body, the management of the chaos, the prevalence of the ineffective culture of overtime, the endless meetings, the work to do good work is not as good as a PPT to do good work, the leadership of the practice of terrible! The leader pursues a poor ‘mastery of the art’ all day not to do personnel, colleagues in the demons and monsters rampant will also be detrimental to the detriment of their own, there are more than 400 days a year do not want to go on this shit shift ……
It can be said that even if the film does not show the real working life of most people, but the audience will be more or less a little bit of feeling, and finally ‘let everything back to the way it should be’ happy ending, or a plate of delicious dumplings.
So I have no doubt that ‘Johnny Keep Walking’ will get a lot of sound volume and pop-ups, which is a collective emotional health care and spiritual massage for the working people.
Probably because I haven’t done enough PPTs or received enough beatings, the emotional value the film offers me is not enough to make me overlook its own shortcomings …… As for what you think, it depends on which perspective you stand on.
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