It's been a long time since I wrote a drama review, and I feel like I'm sitting on pins and needles, like a thorn in my throat, like a thorn in my back. Praise, a little forced, scolding, against conscience, you say it is mediocre scolding is not a compliment, not to mention, it is so strange that it is difficult to classify. "Happy Face", a strange TV series that made me "huh!" in one episode and "Huh?" in three episodes.

"Happy Face" poster

"Happy Face" tells the story of Xu Tian, a 21-year-old young man, adhering to the belief and entrustment of his parents, starting from Nanyang to Guangdong, passing through Fujian, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang, and finally arriving in Shanghai, where he successfully delivered the materials to support the revolution to the Communist International.

At first glance, it looks like a spy war drama, but it is actually a road movie; it seems to be a Republic of China drama, and the details are convincing, and the event arrangement is not too Republican; it may be an adventure theme, and the bad luck along the way is not exciting enough.

A group portrait can only be called a group portrait, but there is basically no character in the group portrait that can empathize with most audiences. One look at the main creator, oh, Xu Bing, that's all right. Both "Red" and "New World" were written by this elder brother. The elder brother likes to play poetic and romantic revolutionary themes, but often the tone is very high, and then it goes downhill. "Happy Face" is a typical example.

"Happy Face" stills

In the first episode of the opening chapter, it is true that the old screenwriter’s skills are seen in every scene. The old sun accepts the task, the train fights the robbers, and a few dialogues stand the two characters of the old sun and Xu Tian.

Immediately afterwards, the frontier town was empty, with a medical clinic, a pawn shop, and several forces surrounding the ownership of the three gold bars, drugging and shooting, openly and secretly robbing, the generous people harboring evil intentions, the rescued were ungrateful, those with backers fought openly, and those without backers watched with cold eyes. The smell of western movies came out, and the smell of film noir came out.

The town does not undertake any immersion task to bring the audience into the real town, it is a virtual stage that is divorced from all real meaning. It's new enough and bold enough. It's rare to see this kind of script structure in domestic dramas. I'm really excited, and I even became a Tencent member for it. After watching two more episodes, I felt gradually something was wrong. The new form can hardly conceal the emptiness of its core, and the strangeness of the characters can hardly conceal the emptiness of its characters. The tone is enough, but there is no foundation.

"Happy Face" stills

It tries to build a seemingly familiar (Republic of China/Revolution/Spy War) drama background, but it is actually a virtual field completely authorized; it seems to tell a routine story that seems to be equally familiar (contributing to the revolution), but in fact it is highly abstract to serve the author's certain ideas and viewpoints. Similar authors and works include Lan Xiaolong's "The Line of Life and Death", "My Leader, My Team", "Good Guy", or some movies by Jiang Wen.

But the similarity is only the outer shell. What is to be expressed inside is mysterious and self-moving. The whole drama can be embodied in the temperament of one of the characters: Yu Yixiu, the head of the western Fujian, has never stepped out of the door in his life. He has read thousands of books and maps of the world.

"Happy Face" stills

Every plot twist, whether it’s Lao Sun’s death, Yu Yixiu’s gambling loss suicide, or Yu Zhou’s obsession with and let go of his ex-girlfriend whom he hasn’t seen for a few years, has many illogical aspects, but I tried my best to understand it at the beginning. Because of the “newness” and certain abstraction of this work, I am willing to put these logical issues aside and watch it as a highly hypothetical stage play stripped of reality. However I was disappointed.

Dong Zijian as Xu Tian

I really don't want to move out of Lan Xiaolong, I can't bear to reduce the dimensionality, but I can't help it. This comparison may be the most intuitive. Whether it is the three "Bingtuan Line" or "Goodfellas", Lan Xiaolong first took into account the historical reality and drama reality under the highly hypothetical drama setting, and then the core expression was precise and solid.

Take "Goodfellas" as an example, a naive idealist sends "seeds" to Shanghai, which is highly similar to the story core of "Happy Face", but the journey along the way, every character and every plot, all serve the theme: the serious illness of the current society, the cruelty and hate of the Japanese invaders, how idealists lost their faith, and how those who worked for tigers awakened. Revolution, why revolution? Whose life was it? The answer to this question must be touching. When "revolution" is used as a verb, the potential energy can be gathered, and when it merges into a stream of water and rushes down, it is the grandeur and excitement of the Milky Way falling into the nine heavens.

Zhang Yi as Zhang Jiayi

Moreover, Lan Xiaolong played the form to the extreme. From the logic of the characters and the logic of the story, there are no major bugs. The sacrifice of one servant after another sent seeds, and the seeds can rebuild the entire network of the underground party in Shanghai. Can the three gold bars stained with blood save China? "Goodfellas" "Qingshan" dies safely, what is needed is to awaken the young and capable time, and not to use youth and life to help tigers. The group of characters Qingshan and Time is a metaphor for the relationship between the revolutionary martyrs and their successors.

And in "Happy Face", the successive deaths are for three gold bars (or the rich man's male protagonist can ask his father to send a few more gold bars at any time), even if the author tries to elevate the three gold bars into "prestige in the Soviet area", it will only make people laugh. If the Soviet area is a Soviet area where a few gold bars can represent "prestige", what revolution is there?

In revolutionary stories, there are often sacrifices. "The red flag is dyed by blood donation." And the blind sprinkling of plasma can only make it appear that "Happy Face" neither understands the difficulties of revolution nor the preciousness of life.

Of course, if the main creator of "Happy Face" feels that the audience has misunderstood it, and "Happy Face" is not about revolution, then what does Xu Bing want to say when the revolutionary story is peeled off? It's human nature, love or ideals, loss and search, you can talk about anything, it doesn't matter. But it’s taboo to use everything, and you can’t explain everything. A knife with a sharp blade is dazzling and water can’t be poured in. The result is just a piece of good wood planed, which chokes people to cough, and carves a four-dimensional thing.

"Happy Face" stills

Absurdity and abstraction are a means rather than an end. If there is a metaphor, but the body is empty, it is quite funny. The word "faith" was not abstracted out of thin air by you, nor was it piled up by the protagonist's long lines of "revolutionary ideals".

The mouth is about the revolutionary ideal of letting the people have land, houses and books to read. As a result, the masses are all vague-faced props. How many living "people" characters are there in the whole play? Without the sympathetic pain of the common people and the pain of the skin, there would be no "common people", and the protagonists who were busy pursuing the "ideal" high in the sky would become "personal designs" one by one. There is no necessary sacrifice, no logical stubbornness, and it is not moving at all, let alone the moving of faith.

Therefore, "Happy Face" is a bit interesting. The author is indeed talented, but the style is greater than the content, and the form is divorced from reality. The effective pretense does not make "Happy Face" more thoughtful and artistic.

But why do I think it is still worth watching, because this is indeed not a "bad drama", it is high above the sky, castles in the sky, at least it has not fallen into a rut and quagmire, the courage and adventurous spirit can be seen with the naked eye, and the quality of the lines and single scenes has indeed worked hard. It is rare in the current Chinese TV drama market where "traffic data" and "drama stars" are the key elements of project promotion. Tencent is also enough to live a bodhisattva, sending money to do such a risky project, so this Tencent member, just recharge if you recharge.