Last year, a "hangover" became the most shining dark horse of the year, first at an ultra-low cost of 35 million, it achieved an excellent box office of 270 million in North America and 460 million in the world, making Warner Bros. make a lot of money; then Bradley Cooper has been up and down in the ranks of third-tier actors for many years, and his career has achieved a big turnaround; and finally won the best picture in the musical comedy category at the Golden Globe Awards at the beginning of this year, and has gone all the way to the end of his dark horse road. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

"The Hangover" is a typical spoof comedy, starting with a twisting plot that is eye-catching and creatively preemptive, and then a variety of unexpected jokes, with the actors' spoofs at the expense of their image, paired with a variety of unbelievable inspirational lines. That's what makes this miracle work.

Since then, many producers have begun to try to imitate this model, hoping to create a dark horse again. After all, the investment in comedy has always been cheap, most of them are less than 50 million, plus publicity and distribution do not need to exert too much effort, as long as they can achieve a box office of more than 100 million in North America, they can make a steady profit - this is not counting the overseas box office, and the low risk is undoubtedly a big plus.

"Evil Boss" is a project born out of this trend.

In fact, New Line Pictures bought the script written by Michael Markowitz in 2005, and the director negotiated at that time was Frank-Oz, but New Line Pictures was not confident enough in this style of comedy and never started filming.

The huge success of "The Hangover" led New Line Pictures to dig up the long-dusty project again, finding John-Francis-Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein to co-write the screenplay, both of whom were complete novice screenwriters who had only written the screenplay for the American drama "Tracing the Bones" before that, and knew nothing about movies. But the style of the two of them is very obvious, John is a young man of only 24 years old, and Jonathan is a middle-aged man of 39 years old, both of them have been up and down in Hollywood for a while, and have completely different experiences of the industry, but they have not accepted the brainwashing of Hollywood's fixed routines, and have maintained enough fresh creativity.

Thus, the script of "Evil Boss" was finally born!

The movie tells the story of three unlucky ordinary employees, Nick's boss is a bastard who writes shamelessness on his head, arrogant, narcissistic, and at the same time takes pleasure in torturing his subordinates and refuses to let them get promoted; Cotter's boss is a middle-aged bald neurotic who is slowly embezzling company property but destroying Kurt's reputation, and his career is in jeopardy; Dale's boss is a sexy/sensual single female doctor, but this woman has a serious erotic/erotic/crazy tendency, and almost picks on any occasion/ Tease the male subordinate, which makes Dale miserable.

The three little clerks are good friends with each other, and in a bad economic situation, quitting is obviously not the best option, and one night, stimulated by alcohol, there is a nervous black man who gives advice, and they decide: kill their boss!

The idea of the "evil boss" is very novel, but it is very close to reality. In real life, almost everyone has experienced workplace troubles, and a bad boss has turned everyday life into a disaster, everyone longs to teach their boss some lessons, but they have to swallow their anger in order to make a living.

This film appears in this context, in an absurd and uninhibited way to vent the pain in the hearts of the depressed staff, but the brilliance of the film is not in the creativity, but in the portrayal of the boss into a lively and interesting character, bastard, but not disgusting.

John is responsible for writing the role of the clerk, while Jonathan is responsible for writing the role of the boss, and the sparks and whimsy between the two are all shown in the six characters, and the result is a funny but believable script.

The jokes of "Evil Boss" come from many aspects, part of it comes from the oppression and grievances between the boss and the staff, this kind of spoof and witty humor supports the first half of the movie, and the other part comes from the stupidity and accidents in the process of the staff trying to murder the boss in the second half, the jokes and the humor created by the lines of the plot itself, plus the simple but stunned performance of the actors, which truly carries forward the charm of comedy.

Needless to say, "Bad Boss" is an ingenious but laughable comedy.

Objectively speaking, the quality of "Evil Boss" is still a little worse than "Hangover", both screenwriters are too immature, and the production of jokes is slightly deliberate and lazy, while the two screenwriters of "Hangover" have previously collaborated on three works, and their thinking is obviously more mature and more unified; have achieved good box office results, and Seth Gordon is only the second time to take the helm of the film.

The gap in experience has led to a gap in the degree of completion of the two works, and the word of mouth of film critics can be seen that the media comprehensive evaluation of "hangover" is 73 points, while the media comprehensive evaluation of "evil boss" is only 57 points - although this score is considered a passing grade in a comedy work.

Despite this, "Evil Boss" was warmly sought after by the audience after its release. Like "The Hangover", it was an investment of 35 million, and finally received 117 million at the box office in North America, and the global box office also reached 209 million, which really made New Line Pictures make a small profit - New Line Pictures had been acquired by Warner Bros. at this time, and it was a label owned by Warner Bros. In other words, Warner Bros. has achieved success from two works, "The Hangover" and "The Evil Boss".

"The Hangover" was later made into a trilogy, and the sequel to "Evil Boss" was naturally on the agenda. However, the second part of the later "Hangover" is really unsatisfactory, it can be said that it earned the box office and lost word of mouth, so that the box office and reputation of the third part have fallen off a cliff;

Despite this, "Evil Boss" can still be said to be a successful comedy work, which is impressive.

When Lan Li saw that the script in his hand was actually an "evil boss", he had to admire Andy's boldness and decisiveness, purely from the first twenty pages of the script, this is indeed an eye-catching script, but the challenge of the role is also very severe.

With Lan Li's age, he naturally can't play the boss, he can only play the staff, and the three staff members all have their own sufferings.

Nick is a ravaged character, in the first half of the story, his performance is relatively low, mainly showing the hardships and torture of the overtime family, just follow the script, personal play space is limited, but in the second half of his reversal will be more obvious, from orderly to chaotic, from wise elite to stunned.

Kurt is a tangled character, under the enthusiastic image of a good man, but he has to endure the greed and disgust of the boss, this character is quite interesting, on the surface it looks like a typical decent gentleman, but after taking off his guard, he will become stupid, and that contrast is really cute.

Dale is a violated character, to put it simply, he needs to be like Megumi Yanagishita, in the face of all kinds of temptation/bewilderment, all kinds of seduction/seduction but sit still, the point is, occasionally directly attacked the key parts of the man, his shyness and panic are even more unbearable. But he's not the kind of hormonal man like Dwayne Johnson, it's more like ...... The side that bears it in the good friends.

It can be said that the three characters have their own characteristics and wonderful, and the difficulty of the performance is naturally different.

If it is chosen by Lan Li, he personally believes that Nick's performance difficulty is the lowest, and the gap and connotation of the role itself are relatively limited, more like playing a fake and serious existence in the whole movie, avoiding the movie being absurd and completely circus, but the challenge difficulty is also the most mediocre.

Kurt and Dale have their own merits, Kurt is a stupid person, and the feeling of oscillating back and forth between honesty and stupidity must be very interesting to perform, while Dale is a submissive bag, plagued by the boss's groping, but unable to resist, just making up the performance in his head, it is enough to make people laugh.

Whichever of these two characters is played, it will be a subversive performance, especially Dale. However, compared to the three staff, Lan Li felt that the role of the three bosses was more challenging, and that was the real out-of-the-ordinary performance. It's a pity that his age is too young to fit in. Even if his soul was old enough at this time.

This is a real pity.

Lan Li doesn't have much research on the script of comedy, but he knows that one of the big regrets of the "evil boss" is that the script is very clear and accurate in the positioning of the three boss roles, like a scalpel, which gives the actors more room to perform, the roles are very easy to shine, and it also gives the movie more laughter;

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 laughter that the character bursts out of himself, including the character's personality setting, funny style, etc. - the core meaning of comedy is to make the audience laugh, which is also the most important task of an actor, isn't it?

But taking a step back, challenging a comedy performance, no matter which of the three staff members, is extremely difficult for Lan Li, because the way and rhythm of comedy are different from the main drama, even if you are stupid, you can't just make the audience laugh. In other words, comedy requires a real "comedic flair".