Chapter 211

Last year, a "hangover" became the brightest black horse in the whole year. First, with an ultra-low cost of 35 million yuan, it made an outstanding box office of 270 million yuan in North America and 460 million yuan in the world, making Warner Brothers a huge profit; After many years of ups and downs in the ranks of third tier actors, Bradley Cooper soared to the sky and made a big turnaround in his career; In the end, he won the best film in the category of musical comedy at the Golden Globe Award at the beginning of this year, and kept his dark horse road to the end.

"Hangover" is a typical spoof comedy. First of all, the twists and turns of the plot brighten people's eyes; Then there are all kinds of unexpected laughs. The actors don't hesitate to sacrifice the image of mischief, with all kinds of incredible inspiration lines. That's what makes this miracle work.

After that, many producers began to try to imitate this model, hoping to create a black horse again. After all, the investment in comedy has always been low, most of which are less than 50 million. In addition, there is no need to make too much effort in publicity and distribution. As long as you can get more than 100 million box office in North America, you can make a steady profit without losing money. This does not count the overseas box office. The low risk is undoubtedly a great benefit.

"Bad boss" is the project born under this trend.

In fact, new line pictures bought the script written by Michael Markowitz in 2005, and the director discussed at that time was frank oz. however, new line pictures did not have enough confidence in this style of comedy, and it has not been able to start shooting.

The huge success of "hangover" has enabled new line studios to dig out the long-standing projects again, and find John Francis Daley and Jonathan m-goldstein to jointly write scripts. Both of them are completely novice screenwriters. Before that, they only wrote the script of "bone searching", I don't know anything about movies. However, their styles are very obvious. John is a young man of only 24 years old, while Jonathan is a middle-aged man of 39 years old. Both of them have been floating and wandering in Hollywood for a long time. They have totally different experiences in the industry, but they have not accepted the brainwashing of Hollywood's fixed routines and maintained enough fresh creativity.

So the script of "bad boss" was born at last!

The film tells the story of three unfortunate ordinary employees. Nick's boss is a shameless bastard. He is arrogant and narcissistic. At the same time, he takes pleasure in torturing his subordinates and refuses to let them get promoted; Kurt's boss is a middle-aged balding psychopath. He is slowly embezzling the company's property, but destroying Kurt's reputation. His career is in danger; Dell's boss is a sexy single woman doctor, but this woman has a serious tendency of eroticism. She almost teases male subordinates, which makes Dell miserable.

The three clerks are good friends to each other. In the bad economic situation, resignation is obviously not the best choice. One night, under the stimulation of alcohol, a nervous black man gave advice. They decided to kill their boss! So the story begins.

The idea of "bad boss" is very novel, but it is very close to reality. In real life, almost everyone has experienced the trouble of the workplace, and bad boss makes daily life become a disaster, everyone is eager to give the boss some lessons, but in order to make a living, they have to swallow.

This film appears in such a background. It uses an absurd and uninhibited way to vent the inner pain of the depressed staff. However, the film's brilliance lies not in the originality, but in the portrayal of the boss as a lively and interesting character, a jerk, but not disgusting.

John is responsible for writing the role of a small clerk, while Jonathan is responsible for writing the role of the boss. The sparks and fantastic ideas between the two people are all shown in the six characters. Finally, a play full of jokes but authentic is achieved.

The jokes of "bad boss" come from many aspects. One part of them comes from the oppression and oppression between the boss and the staff. This kind of mischievous humor supports the first half of the film; The other part comes from the folly and accident in the process of the staff's trying to murder the boss in the second half, the humor created by the plot itself and the lines, as well as the actor's simple but stunned performance, which really carries forward the charm of comedy.

There is no doubt that the "bad boss" is an original comedy which makes people laugh and cry.

Objectively speaking, the quality of "bad boss" is a little worse than "hangover". The two writers are too young, and the making of laugh points is a little deliberate and lazy. The two writers of "hangover" have cooperated with each other in three works before, and their ideas are obviously more mature and unified; There is a huge gap in directing. Todd Phillips had a good reputation before his hangover. Hara on the road, the single men's club and the police have all achieved good box office results. Seth Gordon is the second time to take charge of the film director.

The experience gap leads to a gap in the completion of the two works. As can be seen from the reputation of film critics, the media comprehensive evaluation of "hangover" is 73 points, while the media comprehensive evaluation of "bad boss" is only 57 points - although this achievement has been considered as a pass in comedy works.

Despite this, "bad boss" has been warmly sought after by the audience after its release. Like "hangover", it's an investment of 35 million yuan. In the end, it made a box office of 117 million yuan in North America and 209 million yuan in the world. It's really a small profit for new line pictures, which has been acquired by Warner Brothers and is a brand owned by Warner Brothers. In other words, Warner Bros. has achieved success from "hangover" and "bad boss".

"Hangover" was later made into a trilogy, and the sequel of "bad boss" was naturally put on the agenda. However, the second film of "hangover" is really not satisfactory. It can be said that it made a lot of money at the box office and lost the word-of-mouth, so that the box office and word-of-mouth of the third film both declined“ The same is true of "bad boss". The second movie collapsed completely, and naturally there was no plan for the third movie.

Nevertheless, "bad boss" is still a successful comedy, impressive.

When Lan Li saw that the script in his hand was actually a "bad boss", he had to admire Andy's boldness and determination. From the first 20 pages of the script, it was a brilliant script, but the challenge of the role was also very severe.

In terms of Lan Li's age, he can't play the role of boss, he can only play the role of staff, and each of the three staff members has his own pain.

Nick is a trampled character. In the first half of the story, the difficulty of his performance is relatively low, mainly showing the hardship and torture of the overtime people. Just follow the script, and his personal play space is limited. But in the second half, his reversal will be more obvious, from orderly to chaotic, from wise elite to dumb youth.

Kurt is a tangled character. Under the warm-hearted image of an old man, he has to endure the boss's greed and disgust. This role is quite interesting. On the surface, he looks like a typical gentleman, but he will become stupid after taking off his guard. The contrast is really amazing.

Dell is a character who has been violated. In short, he needs to be like Liu Xiahui, but he does not panic in the face of all kinds of temptations and seductions. The point is that occasionally he is directly attacked on the key parts of a man, and his shyness and confusion make people laugh. But he's not a Dorn Johnson type of hormonal man. He's more like the one who bears in a good friend.

It can be said that each of the three roles has its own characteristics and highlights, and the difficulty of performance is naturally different.

If selected by LAN Lilai, he personally believes that Nick's performance is the most difficult, and the gap and connotation of the role itself are relatively limited. It is more like the existence of the role of prudence in the whole film to avoid completely playing the circus in the film, but the challenge is also the most mediocre.

Kurt and dale have their own strengths. Kurt is a fool. The feeling of swinging back and forth between honesty and stupidity must be very interesting to perform; Dell, on the other hand, is a submissive recipient, suffering from the trouble of his boss, but he can't resist. It's enough to make people laugh just by playing in his mind.

No matter which role these two roles play, it will be a subversive performance, especially Dell. However, compared with the three employees, lanli thinks that the role of the three bosses is more challenging. That's the real exception. Unfortunately, his age is too young for him. Even if his soul is old enough now.

This is really a pity.

Lanli doesn't have much research on comedy scripts, but he knows that one of the major regrets of "bad boss" is that the script defines the roles of the three bosses very clearly and accurately, just like a scalpel, which gives the actors more space to perform, the characters are very easy to shine, and at the same time gives the film more laughs; However, the roles of the three staff members are not clear enough. On the contrary, they are confused. They are the same stupid, the same subdued and the same confused. As a result, there will be some repetition of the laugh points, but it is not easy to burst out sparks.

If the screenwriter can give the three characters a clearer development line, corresponding to the three bosses, then the overall quality of the work will be improved by one section. It's not about the depth of the character or the thickness of the performance, but about the funny points that the character burst out, including the character setting, funny style and so on. The core of comedy is to make the audience laugh, which is also the most important task of the actor, isn't it?

However, it is extremely difficult for lanli to challenge the comedy performance, no matter which role of the three staff members, because the way and rhythm of the comedy performance are different from the drama. Even if he is stupid, he can't make the audience laugh casually. In other words, comedy needs real "comic talent".