"What's the matter with America?"
Is it a bit too far-fetched to rise from a movie to a country? It is - very much. But the 2 hours of movie time, let me see that later I really started to think about this issue.
I have watched American comedies for so many years, especially comedies of this kind of talk show star team. I can understand their efforts to rely on traditions-Christian family values, patriotic sentiments, integration into society, honesty and friendship, I understand them all. But if you stretch the film to 2 hours, I really hope you can talk about something deeper, such as emotional entanglements, socially irreconcilable contradictions, and irony of life experiences. So, as I said at the beginning, when I saw the second half, I started thinking about this philosophical question (same as Scott watching "SpongeBob SquarePants").
The original meaning of the film is simple: the child who lost his father found the image of his father and reached a settlement with his father's sudden death. However, the editing was a mess: it was obvious that the director had difficulty choosing between Scott's personal struggle and his relationship with his new father, which caused the dilemma that both existed at the same time and made the set too long. Since I am sure to talk about two things, just like "The Happiness Line Behind the Clouds", the director must force the screenwriter to explore Scott’s deeper emotional barriers, or arrange a few small details so that the audience can understand his unexposed inner heart struggle. But none of these. From the beginning of Scott's desire to die to the inexplicable restaurant job, Scott has nothing to describe in his heart. He is a tool man. The description of his living condition in one hour is superficial. The scenes between him and his friends are meaningless, just like a group of cartoon people, so that if they are changed into talking dogs, the story will not change in any way. The sad scenes of cartoon dogs feel better than the starring.
On the other hand, the conflict between him and Ray is the focus of the film. However, because of the large description of Scott himself in the first hour of the film, the focus of the film has always been on him, making Ray a mentor role, making him a father and Scott's role. Grinding into Scott's training. But in fact this relationship is the real highlight of this film! Because he was a firefighter, because he reminded Scott of the pain of missing his father, he was extremely resistant to this relationship, and because his anger at his mother went through all this alone turned into anger at his father. And his anger has nowhere to vent, because his father is a hero, he cannot express his anger towards the hero. Everyone will say how nice his father is, especially his mother who is suffering and has nowhere to talk. This is the knot in his heart, and the role of Ray is the projection of all his anger, this is the knot in his heart. As a result, the film is full of his personal state rather than his inner feelings: from the little emotion that he wants to die but dare not die to his story of the growth of a giant baby.
Since 2000, Hollywood has been making comedies of this kind of giant baby growth category. Headed by a group of "Pineapple Express", "40-year-old Virgin", "The Hangover", etc., comedy movies about millennial men (especially men) who are unwilling to grow up and are forced to grow up. The new generation of men chose to retreat to their teenage years because they could not become patriarchal heroes, doing irresponsible things in order to achieve a mockery of what society expected them to achieve. (On the other hand is the rise of male celebrities who are in line with the aesthetics of new women. For example, the feminine male celebrities of China and South Korea have overcome difficulties in the European and American popular markets.) 20 years have passed, Hollywood should be familiar with such movies, but this The film turned out to be like this-dragged, no rhythm, random cuts, and hastily ended.
So what happened to the United States?
Is it the young generation who hides behind the computer screen and has no life? Or after the collapse of the patriarchal society, the cultural structure is torn apart and there is no new authority to fill it? Or is it because years of self-reporting and the proliferation of social platforms have caused self-feeling to be overwhelming? In other words, the United States has never been great. All this is luck. It is because the Second World War brought together international elites. They created the United States today (just like Hong Kong and Taiwan)? I really do not know. From the film Scott scolds his old father, does nothing, loses his enthusiasm for participating in everything, and feels that he has grown up when he does something a dog can do. You can see what young Americans look like in the eyes of the parents represented by Ray. When the mother saw her son tattooed the old father's face on the back of the new father, she was relieved. Is this American value? When children fail to meet the standards, we lower the standards. As long as they can remember that we were once heroes, Made American great once, we are satisfied. From this perspective, or the movie really wants to express the huge conflict between the new and old values of the current American society, then I think this is the first time that an American movie has been alert to the huge collapse of American society. The film really has a landmark meaning.
ps.Bill burr is my favorite American comedian. His idea is very representative of the American values of "old father", that is, when he comes home from work for a day, he uses beer and potato chips on the old sofa. The director chose him to play Ray is the biggest highlight.
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