It is very appropriate to use "open high and go low" to describe the national drama market in 2023.
In the first half of the year, national dramas released Wang Bang one after another, such as "Hurricane", "The Long Season", "Three-Body Problem", etc., anti-crime, suspense, science fiction, and various genres have their own masterpieces.
But in the second half of the year, the plots of "Love as the Camp" and "Welcome to McNuggets Village", which the audience had been waiting for for a long time, were either too crotch-pulling or extremely boring, and word-of-mouth dramas such as "The Day of Chasing the Light" and "The Glory of the Fathers" could not reach the popularity of the hits.
In such an environment, CCTV, the "word-of-mouth king" of national dramas, will send another Wang Bomb contestant in the last month of 2023.
"Minglong Boy" debuted as the finale, telling the story of a gold medal teacher leading a group of troubled teenagers to achieve a counterattack in the college entrance examination.
This drama has just started broadcasting, and it has won the first place in the country in the ratings of the same time period, which is worthy of CCTV. Now, the first wave of word-of-mouth of "Minglong Boy" has just been released, and the audience's scores and evaluations are "to the point", whether it looks good or not, let's take a look at the audience's feedback.
Without further ado, let's look at the praise first.
"Very good at portraying the details of ordinary people's lives", "the overall texture is very good", "the picture is very real", "the pace is fast, and the plot is quite attractive".
It is not difficult to see that the audience's praise is mainly concentrated in two aspects.
One is the rhythm and student group portrait.
The plot of the whole drama is fast-paced, without any delay, and only two episodes of the main characters in the play are played, and the main conflicts are all explained.
Although it is based on the theme of the "college entrance examination" counterattack, the story is to solve the real problems faced by the "problem teenagers" from beginning to end.
For example, Li Ran (played by Wang Qiang), a poor boy who wants to drop out of school and work, Cheng Yushan (played by Xu Ruohan), a beautiful girl who wants to find a rich man to marry, Bian Xiaoxiao (played by Zeng Youzhen), who is dedicated to being an Internet celebrity, and Jiang Qinglang (played by Xu Qijie) who strives to realize his dream of being a singer, etc.
"Minglong Boy" captures the essence of youth dramas, that is, the shaping of student group portraits, in youth dramas, people who are young are the protagonists in the shot.
As soon as these students came out, the audience seemed to return to the hard-working college entrance examination life in a second.
The second is the portrayal of details.
Audiences who are familiar with director Ding Hei know that he is best at using the details of life to create dramatic tension, and "Minglong Boy" still continues the style that the director is familiar with.
Cheng Yushan's stepfather met the teacher who came to visit his home, and said that he bought the delicious food in his hand for Cheng Yushan, but he didn't even bother to ask her to come up for dinner when he opened the meal.
The ** hanging on the wall is almost all Cheng Yushan's younger brother's single **, and she is not even in the family portrait.
When Li Ran (played by Wang Qiang) first appeared, he helped his classmates bring their mobile phones into the school and mentioned a twenty, which directly paved the way for Li Ran's family environment.
The story is not bloody, the texture is advanced, the filter is comfortable, and the conflict is filmed from simple life, and this drama is naturally good-looking.
However, "Minglong Boy" is certainly not perfect, and there are naturally bad reviews if there are good reviews.
"The stereotype of high school life is quite big", "the plot is exaggerated, the acting skills are exaggerated", "there is nothing new", "the plot is still old-fashioned", "some nondescript".
Similarly, the negative reviews of this show can also be divided into the following two aspects.
First, the plot is suspended and the stereotype is serious.
The overall setting of the plot is that the teacher counterattacks with the poor students, and the principal recruits Lei Ming (played by Zhang Ruoyun) to come in because he doesn't want some students to be ignored and give up easily.
However, one of Lei Ming's requests was that "I will pick the students in the class".
Sure enough, the students he picked out were Li Ran, who had passed the first place in a single physics test and never ranked more than the bottom two hundred, and Cheng Yushan, who scored fifteen points in the mathematics test but only did the last big question.
Of course, other gods haven't appeared yet, it's not so much that they are bad students, but that they are geniuses who haven't gotten on the right track.
What's more critical is that it is clearly the subject of "anti-discrimination" poor students, but "careful selection" has become another kind of discrimination, which seems to show that those ordinary students will never be able to achieve a counterattack by relying on the college entrance examination.
Moreover, under the portrayal of "Minglong Boy", the reason why students don't want to take the college entrance examination seems to be summed up as - the unhappiness of the original family.
Li Ran's parents died and his grandmother depended on each other, which caused him to have a very strong psychological defense, and he didn't want to focus on making money in the college entrance examination.
Cheng Yushan grew up in a restructured family and was not treated by his stepfather, and his mother put all her energy on Cheng Yushan's half-brother, in this case, Cheng Yushan could only think of a way out to change his fate by marrying.
Among the characters who appear, the drama tries its best to show the pain brought to them by their original family, but it is not only the family that really troubles the college entrance examination candidates, but also the conflicts between classmates, the relationship between teachers and students, the ups and downs of grades, etc., which can bring great pressure to the college entrance examination students.
As netizens said, even people with happy families and stable grades have not suffered less from the college entrance examination, and happy families will also raise business students, "Minglong Boy" only emphasizes that it is not easy for students from unfortunate families to face the college entrance examination, which is too one-sided.
Second, poor casting and poor acting skills.
"Minglong Boy" tells the story of teenagers, but these teenagers in the play can have babies depending on their age.
Let's just say that Wang Qiang, who plays Li Ran, is 27 years old and plays a 17-year-old high school student in the play, even if he is wearing a school uniform, his face has long lost the youthfulness of the student.
Moreover, he didn't act well, he was dull when he took the lead in picking thorns, and he didn't have the feeling of schadenfreude of a rebellious teenager at all, and he had no characteristics.
However, Wang Qiang's poor acting skills as a young actor are also expected by the audience, but Zhang Ruoyun's acting skills in the new drama have also "overturned".
Zhang Ruoyun of the new drama has implemented one word from beginning to end: pretend!
When he persuaded the students to come to Class 11 on the mahjong table, he just read the lines emptyly, without the slightest mentality of thinking about the students, and it was too embarrassing to pretend to be profound.
As the saying goes, art is the best in life, and it is difficult to arouse the audience's empathy for film and television works that are not close to reality.
Judging by the few episodes that aired.
The plot setting of "Minglong Boy" takes care of one or the other, and wants to emphasize the connection with ordinary people too much, and tries to amplify those points that can make people empathize, but uses too much force to distort the plot.
However, there are also many advantages of this drama.
For example, a lot of space is used to depict the image of teenagers, no blood, no love, no paranoia, the main line is the story of the student's counterattack, which is bright, the plot of the first few episodes is not procrastinated, there is anxiety, there is growth, and there is friendship, which is very in line with the audience's preferences.
At the moment, only two episodes of "Minglong Boy" have been broadcast, and the follow-up word-of-mouth is still unknown, do you think this drama is good?