Big Red Envelope
大红包
China, 2021, colour, 2.35:1, 122 mins.
Director: Li Kelong 李克龙.
Rating: 6/10.
This amusing but over-long comedy centred on a phoney wedding gradually loses its initial sharpness.
STORY
Suzhou city, Jiangsu province, eastern China, the present day. After a major shouting match in the offices of Green Leaf Technology Group between Chen Zhong (Bao Bei’er) and his ex-girlfriend Du Ying (Liao Weiwei), Chen Zhong asks managing director Qian Haoshi (Jia Bing) for a transfer up north to the company’s Harbin office as sales manager. To help matters along, he slips his boss a fat hongbao 红包 (red envelope). Qian Haoshi agrees to the posting but warns Chen Zhong that it will be for at least five years, maybe 10. While packing at home, Chen Zhong tells his colleague and friend Da Rui (Zhang Yiming) that he’s spent more than RMB300,000 over the past 10 years giving out hongbao to stay in people’s favour; but he considers it a good investment, like money in the bank. However, when Da Rui points out that, if he were to fall in love and get married in faraway Harbin, none of his friends would attend and bring him reciprocal hongbao, Chen Zhong panics and tries to pull out. But Qian Haoshi – despite pocketing another hongbao from Chen Zhong – says it’s too late. Da Rui comes up with the idea of Chen Zhong quickly getting married before leaving for Harbin, in order to get the hongbao; only when he discovers he’s broke does Chen Zhong take the idea seriously. When he tells Du Ying that he already has a new girlfriend and is getting married, she’s unimpressed, as she already has a rich new boyfriend (Zhao Yixin). Posing as a film producer, Da Rui introduces Chen Zhong to Ellie (Yi Seong-min), a British Chinese who graduated from a UK art college and now works as an actress. In fact she’s just been sacked from a film for critiquing the director’s script. Da Rui claims he and Chen Zhong are making a film about a man whose girlfriend has gone off with a rich guy and so hires an actress to play his fiancee in a fake wedding in order to scam lots of hongbao from the guests. Da Rui says that Chen Zhong is the director and leading man. Ellie agrees to the part and, in what she is told is just a rehearsal, she appears at Chen Zhong’s company send-off in a glamorous changpao – to the surprise of Du Ying. Afterwards, in the office, Da Rui pretends to give Chen Zhong a farewell hongbao, thereby embarrassing all his workmates into giving one as well – a ruse that nets them RMB80,000. Du Ying remains leery of the whole marriage. When she voices her suspicions to Qian Haoshi, the latter tells Chen Zhong that, to prove his fiancee is genuine, he must hold a real marriage ceremony before leaving and invite everyone along.
REVIEW
About to be transferred hundreds of kilometres away from his friends and colleagues, a marketing manager arranges a false wedding just to get their hongbao 红包 in Big Red Envelope 大红包, a clever but way over-long comedy of oneupmanship and fiscal greed that’s a good vehicle for baby-faced comedian Bao Bei’er 包贝尔, 36. This latest production by prolific, Shandong-born journeyman Li Kelong 李克龙, 41, who’s made films in every conceivable genre the past decade, is up there with his better stuff like horror Flower’s Curse 花咒 (2014), comedy Super Four S4侠降魔记 (2018) and high-school fluff Inferior Student Qiao Xi 差等生乔曦 (2019), and is occasionally superior. But the droll tone of the first half gets thinner and thinner during the over-long wedding sequence and the lengthy shenanigans thereafter, with the characters evoking no real emotion by the end. Despite all that, it’s proved to be Li’s breakthrough hit, staying in the Top 10 and taking a respectable RMB200 million in its first two weeks.
In fact it’s a re-make of Li’s earlier comedy, Cash Gift 红包 (2014, see poster, left), with virtually identical dialogue, scenes and (sometimes) even shots. Though it only took a microscopic RMB240,000, Cash Gift was a perfectly watchable budget comedy, whereas Envelope is a fully-fledged mainstream movie. The cast is higher profile, performances are punchier, production values are slicker, and the whole thing – thanks to the compositions of d.p. Yang Kai 杨凯 (Inferior Student Qiao Xi) – looks much more cinematic.
Starting with a drily humorous slanging-match between two office colleagues who used to be romantically involved, Li’s script is at its sharpest in the first half, with Bao especially good at straightfaced comedy and double takes. Feeling shamed in front of his colleagues, and having spent a fortune greasing palms with hongbao on his way up, Chen Zhong (Bao) requests a transfer to the company’s Harbin office, way up north. He only starts to panic when he realises that (a) he’s broke and (b) he’ll never get any reciprocal hongbao from friends and colleagues if he falls in love and gets married up there. Solution: he and his best pal (Zhang Yiming 张一鸣) pose as film-makers and hire a wannabe actress to take part in a fake wedding before he leaves comfy Suzhou for the wilds of Northeast China.
Zhang, 34, who’s affiliated with Beijing comedy troupe Ma Hua FunAge 开心麻花, played the duplicitous best pal in the satire Hello Mr. Billionaire 西虹市首富 (2018), and he’s equally good here as the smooth-talking, nefarious sidekick, sparking the often variable Bao to extend his comedic range. As the pretentious wannabe actress who falls for their scam, Swiss-born Korean Yi Seong-min 이성민 | 李成敏 [Clara Lee], 35 – who played alongside Bao in his directing debut, action-comedy Fat Buddies 胖子行动队 (2018) – is good as far as her role goes, which is not much beyond wide-eyed and glamorous. Her spoken Chinese also has a noticeable Korean accent, wrong for the role of a UK-born Chinese. The film’s other colour comes from the many supporting roles, especially the wonderful Jia Bing 贾冰 (the train conductor in Lost in Russia 囧妈, 2020) as the oily boss of Bao’s character and Yue Yueli 岳跃利 as the bride’s real father. Li’s favourite actress, Liao Weiwei 廖蔚蔚, who played the wannabe actress in the original film, is rather low-wattage here as the suspicious ex.
All the various plot strands, and the multiple deceptions, should come together in the phoney wedding sequence that starts an hour into the film, but this section never quite sparks as it should. The humour is not quite sharp enough, and the editing and pacing are not quite on the nose. And the (very) extended coda, in which real love may find a way, too often feels like a leftover. Li may finally have had a commercial breakthrough but he’s still a second-league film-maker.
For the record, in the 2014 version the ex’s name is Liu Yuqing (well played by Song Ziqiao 宋梓乔), not Du Ying; the main character asks to be transferred to Hainan island (in the south), not Harbin (in the north); his boss’ name is Fang, not Qian; the actress’ name is Yin Xiaohe, not Ellie, and she studied in South Korea, not the UK; the company’s name is VQ, selling soft drinks, not technology; and the main character and his pal first go for a bride to a sleazy dating agency called Hong Lou Meng 红楼梦 (“Dream of the Red Chamber”) – the only scene that does not feature in the remake, though it’s referred to in a roundabout way. Apart from those small changes, the two versions are virtually identical, with the 2014 version only five minutes shorter. As well as Liao, the two male leads from the 2014 version, Wang Qi 汪奇 and Guo Jinjie 郭金杰, pop up in cameos.
CREDITS
Presented by Kelong Pictures (Shanghai) (CN), Moon Movies (Foshan) (CN), Fujian Zongheng Sihai Pictures (CN), Shanghai Taopiaopiao Movie & TV Culture (CN), Shanghai Boguan Pictures (CN).
Script: Li Kelong. Photography: Yang Kai. Editing: Peng Dong. Art direction: Wang Wenqing. Styling: Xiao Hua. Sound: Zhang Yuzhu, Ding Yeheng, Liu Jiang. Executive direction: Zhang Jiankang.
Cast: Bao Bei’er (Chen Zhong), Yi Seong-min [Clara Lee] (Ellie), Zhang Yiming (Da Rui), Jia Bing (Qian Haoshi, Chen Zhong’s boss), Xu Juncong (Gangzi, security guard), Liao Weiwei (Du Ying, Chen Zhong’s ex), Zhao Yixin (Gao Jun, Du Ying’s boyfriend), Jiang Yuxin (Xiaowei), Du Yuan (company chairman), Yue Yueli (Ellie’s father), Li Ping (Ellie’s mother), Wang Xiaoli (actor for Ellie’s father), Li Lin, Guo Jinjie, Ge Tian, Wang Qi.
Release: China, 22 Jan 2021.