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After repeated name changes, withdrawals and advance release dates, the new film "Catching Dolls" by the "Shen Ma" duo (Shen Teng and Ma Li) was screened on a large scale.

In fact, it can no longer be considered a "preview". On July 13, the screening schedule exceeded 30%, which is higher than all the movies in theaters. The box office has been unstoppable all the way. On July 14, the single-day box office exceeded 200 million, which quickly heated up the cold 2024 summer season - this also shows that the audience popularity of the "Shen Ma" combination is really not to be underestimated.

Long queues formed in the cinema for the first time in a long time. At 6 pm on Saturday, the theater was packed. Judging from the actual "laughing effect" - the audience burst into laughter from time to time, it proved that the "Shen Ma" combination has a strong ability to "control" the fans.

From the perspective of production and performance, this comedy movie is not bad. Many viewers who have experienced the baptism of "poor upbringing" thinking education were deeply moved and thought that this movie hit the pain point.

Indeed, the core of "Catching Dolls" is to exaggerate the absurdity of "raising children in poverty". From this perspective, it is remarkable.

However, it is not without controversy.

For example, a Douban netizen's short review received over a thousand likes: "Almost all the jokes are based on deceiving children. They killed Ma Jiye." Another Douban netizen was even more ruthless:

"The movie that sentenced Happy Twist to death..."

This is actually a kind of misunderstanding.

"Catching Dolls" is not a film led by Happy Twist. The first producer is Xihongshi Films (invested by its wholly-owned subsidiary Haikou Xihong Hutong), in which the two directors Yan Fei and Peng Damo (real name Peng Anyu) hold more than 60% of the shares. Happy Twist is only a small shareholder with 15% of the shares. In terms of investment share in this film, Twist ranks only fourth, with Wanda Film and Maoyan Entertainment above them. Although Yan and Peng were from Twist, they became independent as early as 2016. "Catching Dolls" is their "Xihongshi Universe".

"The Super Family" in the 2023 summer season is the authentic Mahua movie. If it is to be sentenced to death, it died once last year.

Although it is not a Happy Twist movie, "Catching Dolls" does have the usual problems of Twist movies, the first and foremost of which is "imitating classics."

1. Copy the Truman Framework

It is said that the script of "Catching Dolls" was completed before the filming of "The Richest Man in Xihong City", but due to various reasons, the original work was replaced by a remake. "Xihong City" was a remake of the American movie "Brewster's Millions", formerly known as "Capital Successor".

There wasn't much material about "Catching Dolls" before the preview. There was almost no useful information in the trailer, and the same was true for the plot summary on Douban. Even the director's introduction at the film promotion conference was vague... It felt like a Hitchcock-style suspense movie, and if you were spoiled before watching it, the fun would be reduced by half.

But I believe that the audience who have watched the film will definitely realize that this is not the case at all. The so-called "suspense" is nothing more than the core design of the American movie "The Truman Show", in which a child was kept in the dark by the whole world, but in "Catch the Dolls", it was changed to that he was deceived by his parents for more than ten years.

But is this really a suspense? A few minutes into the movie, the seemingly poor couple Shen Ma got into a luxury car in a very "low-key" way, and they themselves "pre-released" the answer to the mystery that they had kept secret beforehand.

The whole film is basically based on the framework of "The Truman Show", and even some details are "taken from others". For example, in "Catch the Dolls", the "grandma" was exposed and had to "die", and "Truman" also has a similar "die due to exposure" plot; for another example, at the end of "Catch the Dolls", when Xiao Ma opened the door of the tunnel and the light outside was dazzling, it inevitably reminded people of the moment when "Truman" pushed open the door on the white curtain wall at the end, which has become a classic in film history.

This shows that from "Charlotte's Troubles", "The Richest Man in Xihong City" to "Catching Dolls", Mahua-themed movies or movies derived from Mahua have always had the shadow of classics, and the former was once embroiled in controversy over plagiarism. In fact, the dramas that Kai Xin Ma Hua relied on to get started were mostly "taken from others".

Of course, if the disciple is better than the original, there is nothing to say, but the probability of a commercial film that is currently profit-oriented surpassing the classics is very small.

2. The form is obtained but the spirit is not

In "The Truman Show", Jim Carrey is of course the main character, and his father is an insignificant "passerby". But it is not the case in "Catching Dolls", which becomes a bit "putting the cart before the horse". After all, ten years ago, Shen Teng could barely put on school uniform and sit in the classroom to challenge the role of a student. Ten years later, he has gained weight and looked more haggard. If he challenges the role of "doll" in "Catching Dolls", I believe that even if the age-reducing special effects are more advanced than those in "Legend", it will still be very inconsistent.

Therefore, since it was not convenient for him to play "Wawa", he could only play Wawa's father. What's more, Ma Li was there, and he couldn't let her snatch the role from Li Jiaqi, so "Shen Ma" could only play Wawa's parents.

But in this way, the perspective changes and the story becomes a bit confusing, because originally Truman slowly discovered that something was not right with the world around him, so he began to follow the clues and tried to resist, but in "Catch the Doll", it becomes the omniscient perspective of "Shen Ma", the initiator, who constantly checks for omissions and fills in the gaps in this "Xihong City Universe" with their "employees" to make up for the loss.

There aren't many supporting roles in "Truman", because the plot of accidentally revealing the truth and then trying to cover it up is too similar and doesn't need to be repeated again and again. But it's not the case in "Catch the Doll". The first hour or so is almost entirely about different supporting roles in different corners, trying their best to make their presence felt, but the role they play is the same, that is, to mislead the "doll" - Ma Jiye in his childhood.

This practice of repeatedly piling up similar plots reminds people of the 2024 summer blockbuster "The Silent War". It also seems to be very rich in content, with constant reversals. Each "supporting role" has his own unspeakable story, and each can even be connected to at least one social news hotspot.

If we say that in the early Japanese social mystery novels, one story usually focused on one social event, then "Silent Killing" is like a complete collection, or a bound volume, which collects all the lively social events of a month or even a year. As for whether the connections between them are close or whether the logic is clear, the director does not seem to care, as long as the quantity is sufficient and the taste is strong enough, it's fine.
"Catching Dolls" has a similar situation when handling the material. The interaction between children and "passers-by" would have been enough in one or two places, but in this film it is endless and repeated again and again. After a long time, they are still practicing English listening and solving math problems, just like an online class, and I don't know when it will end... and the overall plot has no real advancement!

"Truman" is mainly a satire on reality shows, and its strong criticism of "entertainment to death" is still resounding. "Catching Dolls" has become a discussion of family education issues, and in this respect, it is actually closer to the 2019 Russian film "Rich Second Generation". The rich father in the film has only one son, who has been spoiled since childhood and has been causing trouble. The father couldn't stand it, so he spent a lot of money to set up a big game and bought an abandoned village, so that the son who woke up from a coma thought he had traveled back to the 19th century. Not only did he become poor, but he was also downgraded in class status and became a serf, living a life worse than cattle and horses, in dire straits...

Of course, the story of "Rich Second Generation" is much more extreme than "Catching Dolls". Not only does it combine the two sons into one, but it also does not require the dolls to be deceived. However, this is similar to a famous German movie in 2003, which requires a plot of waking up from a coma and finding that "things have changed and people have changed". In fact, Xu Zheng's "The Last Lesson" in "My Hometown and Me" also paid tribute to it without any concealment.

So, to some extent, "Catch the Dolls" is not even as extreme as this Russian movie, and of course, it is a world apart from "The Truman".

At this point, it is actually a bit sad - 25 years ago, the best Hollywood comedy star was acting in classics, while 25 years later, the best Chinese comedy star is acting in soap operas.

3. Examine the poor and let the rich go

There is a comment online: "Rich people act rich in movies and pretend to be poor to cheat poor people out of their money."

Not only "Catching Dolls", but also "Reverse Life", which is mainly about deliverymen, was also ridiculed in this way.

Of course, this is a satire on "208" and has nothing to do with the movie.

But back to "Catch the Doll" itself, some people see it as a satire on the education of raising children in poverty. A friend of mine said after watching it that it reminded her of her father's repeated words when she was a child that her family was poor and she had to work hard, so the movie made her feel deeply moved. Her family was not rich, but they were not poor either, at least not extremely poor.

In fact, if the audience were all ordinary families like this, it would be fine if everyone just laughed and sighed. At best, it magnified the educational inertia of this group of people. Even if they don't work hard, their fate has already been cast, and it doesn't matter if they just lie down.

But there are some people in this world who have truly experienced poverty and hardship, and some who grew up in the same dilapidated families as the one created by Lao Ma in "Catching Dolls". How do they feel about this?

This group of people absolutely need to "change their destiny". If they don't work hard, they will really have nothing and won't even be qualified to lie down. Let alone being admitted to Peking University or Tsinghua University, even being able to attend an ordinary university can bring them the opportunity to change their destiny.

In fact, this is the only way for a very poor family.

If you change to this perspective, you will find that "Catching Dolls" pokes at their pain points and rubs them repeatedly.

What is ironic is the way of education of the truly poor people, and what is being reflected upon is also the thinking of the truly poor people to "change their fate against all odds" - but is there anything wrong with this?

However, there is not much reflection on the rich - except that he sent his eldest son abroad without knowing Chinese characters and had a boyfriend.

This is like making fun of the poor, and the rich are just laughing and smiling at each other.

Therefore, the fact that "Catching Dolls" only stops at reviewing the education of the poor is precisely the most unacceptable part of the film.

4. The ending is sloppy

There has always been one thing that people criticize about Mahua-style comedies, which is that they spend most of the time letting themselves go, and then suddenly return to "mainstream values" in the last few minutes. This has nothing to do with the length of the film, because no matter how short the Spring Festival Gala skits are, the allocation of time is roughly the same.

This point is more prominent in "Catching Dolls", because the transformation in other previous movies mainly happened to the protagonist like Shen Ma, but in "Catching" the doll will grow up, rebel, and discover the truth, so it is not convenient to put all the transformation in the last few minutes of the movie.

So how to deal with it? In the movie, the son gave up the first college entrance examination and pretended to be kidnapped. In the end, he found out the truth and confronted his parents face to face... Then he continued to take the college entrance examination the next year and finally got into a sports school with high scores. It was a perfect balance, not offending anyone, and even habitually picked up empty plastic bottles while running. Meanwhile, the Shenma team was planning the next... having children!

Is such a well-rounded and smooth-talking happy ending really good? Many netizens expressed their concern that the son would go crazy. Indeed, he had enough reasons to be schizophrenic, instead of seemingly effortlessly balancing all aspects of his life one by one, perfectly, and finding himself again.

The audience is not satisfied, of course, because the rich dad who pretended to be a poor dad did not get real punishment, and the poor son who was originally a rich son did not really resist from beginning to end. For example, he used his own way to treat others, and also deceived his parents thoroughly...

He joined forces with an important employee of "Shen Ma" to set up a trap to make the two elders think that they were really bankrupt. Moreover, the trap was designed with great detail, and the knowledge points that so many teachers had carefully taught their son were used. It was not like self-kidnapping, where it was just a formality and then the trump card was revealed again.

5. Dislocation from reality

In a one-star review on Douban, a netizen named “Two Commands” said: “Doing your best as a person is the best education for your children.” This involves a fundamental educational issue, that is, does the father played by Shen Teng need to pretend to be poor in order to educate his young son?

Because the logic in the movie "Rich Second Generation" is relatively smooth. The son is no longer a good person, and in order to make him stop in his tracks, they spend a lot of money to set up a "time travel" scheme to reform him.

Or it could be more "normal", that is, seeing that his son's lifestyle has deviated a bit, the father pretends to be bankrupt and poor, so that his son can "remember the bitter past and think of the sweet past", instead of making himself poor when the child is very young, and then being poor for many years, for eighteen years.

Of course, East Asians have always given people a sense of endurance. There are many tricks in Japanese mystery novels that require decades of perseverance to succeed. And the Chinese magician in Nolan's "The Prestige" can pretend to have bow legs in front of people for years in order to perform a magic trick. But does this "extreme" really need to be put in the education of the next generation?

After all, more and more people have begun to realize that enduring hardship and being poor are two completely different things. The ability to endure hardship is to lock on to a goal. No matter how much resistance and difficulty you encounter in the process, you can remain committed, overcome all difficulties, and finally achieve it... This ability cannot be honed by keeping the faucet dripping or picking up plastic bottles, no matter whether the plastic bottles fall on the roadside or in the stadium.

Being poor is being poor. Poor people have low aspirations. Long-term poverty is more likely to make a person humble and mean rather than open-minded and noble.

What's more, throughout the entire long education process, the father played by Shen Teng had no idea from the beginning what kind of person he wanted to train his youngest son to be. Would he be a "nouveau riche" who had no academic qualifications like himself but could make a name for himself; or would he be tutored unknowingly and become a top student in Peking University or Tsinghua University, or would he just be fine as long as he didn't run a marathon?

Precisely because he himself did not know, his son at a young age was even more uncertain. Therefore, this so-called "poverty" education was unreliable from the beginning and there was no real drama.

But the most important practical question is, would the super-rich want to go to Peking University or Tsinghua University? Maybe the "Ivy League" is what they need to consider to get in?

6. Abuse of the Code of Success

Yan Fei and Peng Damo, the directors of "Catching Dolls", created a skit for the Spring Festival Gala with Shen Teng and Ma Li in their early years. Later, they adapted the play "Charlotte's Troubles" by Happy Twist into a movie. After the success, they set up Xihong City Films to start their own business. The three feature films they have made so far are closely related to wealth and poverty, as well as "success studies".

For example, in "Charlotte's Troubles", the protagonist "travels" back to his student days, and then uses the "time difference" to be the first to "sing" those popular golden songs, thus becoming a music superstar; "The Richest Man in Xihong City" is even more direct, a goalkeeper who plays in a third-class team suddenly accepts a happy challenge from a mysterious consortium to spend 1 billion in a month, so he automatically jumps to a higher class and starts to worry about how to spend money...

In "Catch the Dolls", apart from the elements such as luxury houses, luxury cars, brand-name bags and famous chefs, there are not many direct displays of the lives of the rich. The rich and the poor do not have a direct confrontation in this movie. You can't even see how the son at the end will face the life that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth...not to mention that real financial management ability is not the same as doing the math to buy groceries.

In these three masterpieces directly related to wealth and poverty, the male protagonists succeed too easily, even casually, and cannot withstand the test and scrutiny. There is no real transformation or choice. It is more like a daydream that is only responsible for "feeling good". In "Catching Dolls", although it has become a nightmare for the son, he will wake up one day, but he wakes up and there is no more...

The protagonist is like this, not to mention the supporting roles. In "The Richest Man in Xihong City", there is a supporting character who barks like a dog for money, and in "Catching Dolls", every corner is filled with loyal employees who are as energetic as if they were injected with chicken blood. But among so many supporting roles, can't there be an outlier?

Can't there be supporting characters with different opinions? Thus providing a different perspective from the protagonists, father and son, or even a real attitude towards life?

7. The “Original Sin” of the Two Directors

With three films, Yan Fei and Peng Damo have achieved box office success, but also two lawsuits. These two lawsuits have branded the two big comedy directors with the "original sin" of suspected copy-paste.

The first lawsuit was that film critic Yang Wen publicly accused "Charlotte's Troubles" of plagiarizing Coppola's "Peggy Sue Got Married" on a WeChat public account called "Yinghuazhi". The two directors later sued Yang Wen, demanding that he delete the article in question, publicly apologize, and claim various losses of more than 2.21 million yuan.

In the end, Yang Wen lost the case and was required to pay the plaintiff 80,000 yuan in compensation and make a public apology. At the same time, netizens spontaneously raised funds for him to use for compensation.

The second lawsuit was with screenwriter Wang Qian. The screenwriter said that "The Richest Man in Xihong City" plagiarized the story outline of her original script, and sued the screenwriter and six defendants including Happy Twist Films for copyright infringement, demanding that the defendants stop the infringement, apologize, and compensate for reasonable expenses.

After Wang Qian lost the first trial, she continued to appeal, and finally the second trial ruled that there was insufficient evidence to support the claim that the film constituted plagiarism, and the original judgment was upheld.

Although both directors won the two cases of plagiarism mentioned above, the grievances and right and wrongs involved may be the same as the one-star review of "Catching Dolls". Was it a deliberate attempt to sing a different tune and take advantage of the popularity, or was there some other reason and hidden story?

As for the plot of "Catching Dolls", how much do it pay tribute to "The Truman Show" and "Rich Second Generation"? And how about the rationality of the story itself and the motivations of the characters?

Whether it is a satire or criticism of Chinese-style education, has it reached the "extreme" within the possible scope? Or is it just like "The Silent Killer" and "Wading the Sea of ​​​​Anger", which is just a social topic that easily triggers emotions...

That's all?

Die Ge Jia: We make such comments because we have great expectations for the movie. It is not mindless venting, nor is it groundless talk. I hope the fans and creators will be informed. Many of our colleagues are fans of Shen Teng.

Written by | Li Yi
Planning | Entertainment Spring and Autumn Editorial Department