Shao Nian Ba Bi Lun (2024)

The cast are excellent, but the writer's need to reconsider their life choices.

Neo is excellent in this. To be fair the entire cast is actually excellent. It's a pity the story doesn't do them any justice.
This is meant to be a upbeat coming of age story following a group of late teens into their early 20's in a factory town in Fucheng China.
Initially I loved the costume, music, cinematography, acting and everything. It's a blatant hommage to those 80's American coming of age stories, from everything like Pretty in Pink, Fast Time at Ridgemont High and Ferris Buellers Day Off, to Stand By Me and The Outsiders.
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BUT, and it's a big BUT...... it fails to really grapple with many of the questions it raises, and all the various issues are really just there to have something for our little gang of indomitably upbeat heroes(TM) to overcome.
There are some truly viscous, selfish and horrible human beings they cross and have to deal with, which is pretty realistic. Failing to be able to over come those arseholes and learning to cope with that failure, as well as all the inherent flaws in the system that lets said arseholes rise to the top, is a perfectly normal part of growing up...but this drama doesn't really know how to deal with the issues it raises in any satisfying manner.
The story just shrugs it's shoulders, says lesson learnt and then drags you onto the next arc. Bad guys are deal with in the most perfunctory manner, and even good guys get stitched up for the most half arsed reasons... and the story just expects you to accept this and move on without actually questioning whether or not it's really right or just even. It's just life and don't look too hard at this system lets keep moving, listen to the fluffy upbeat music again and away we go to the next arc....
This starts a bad cycle of shit happens, our little gang struggle to overcome it, but before anything gets really dealt with, in comes the upbeat music and bright sunshiney camera work and every things OK and ALL RIGHT again!...and in comes the next arc to repeat the cycle...
In fact it got so overwhelmingly jarring, that as much as I initially loved the music, it's just got TOO MUCH by the end.
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Spoiler warning below
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There are some definite character choices there that the writer made. Mostly I noticed it's the women who once again suffer for the sake of giving something for the men to angst over. The trope Women in Refridgerators exists for a reason...There is a minor character death at the end, but they can't count since no other characters in the drama apparently even notice or acknowledges this event. Which is a seriously dirty resolution for this particular character.

My recommendation is to watch only if you really like the actors. They do phenominally well with this. And it certainly gives them some meaty scenes to work with. However the plots starts sagging in the early teens and it only gets worse.

The music is a delight, the camera work is a delight, and the director definitely knows how to make Hou Ming Hao look incredibly good. In fact I'd almost go as far as to say the director has a crush on HMH given how inordinately handsome he always makes HMH look in every scene, even in comparison to Yang Cai Yu, let alone the rest of the cast.


It's just ...the ending would possibly not have felt so wrong, if I wasn't so annoyed about that death. The last 4 eps just jarred badly and the very end just ended up being insult to injury. They could have pulled it all off, but that would have required a reasonably competent writer.
The last 4 eps alone dropped this from a possible 8.5 to my current 6.5 I would have gone lower if I was judging on the writing alone.

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