|
薛白
【编者按】俗话说：大俗即大雅。《神偷奶爸》这部滑稽搞笑的3D动画片在全美3400家影院公映的首周便拿下惊人的6012万的首周票房，轻松战胜此前的票房冠军：《暮色3:月食》。对此，《时代周刊》记者Richard Corliss特地撰写文章《神偷奶爸：值得一看》，下面让我们赏析一下这篇语言生动，又不失深刻分析的电影评论。
(1) After the intense emotional workout of Toy Story 3 — where many young children were too scared to stay for the end, and some of those who did asked, "Daddy, was that a holocaust1?" — parents and kids may be looking for an animated feature2 that's low-maintenance3, good-looking and mildly original, and won't plant lingering traumas4 in the psyches of the wee5 ones. Despicable Me fills that bill.
(2) It's the story of a world-class supervillain6 named Gru (voiced by Steve Carell in a fake, menacing7Eastern European accent), whose conception of evil is little-boy mischievousness8. Yes, he likes to torture9 kids — say, by popping their animal balloon with a pin — but only after amusing them: creating the animal balloon he intends to pop. And now, as Gru tells his army of minions10 — tiny, goggled11 yellow marshmallow12 creatures who are loyal but not too bright — he plans to steal the moon by shrinking it. (3)Lately, though, he's been dwarfed13 in nastiness14by dweebish15 young Vector (Jason Segel), who managed to swipe the Great Pyramid at Giza. Until Gru proves he's No. 1, the Bank of Evil won't give him a loan. So he adopts three orphan sisters to infiltrate16 Vector's laboratory on the pretense of selling him Girl Scout cookies. They, of course, are the adversaries17 he really has to worry about. While he's shooting and shrinking the moon, they could find a villain's heart and warm it.
Even in this brief synopsis18, and even if you're a kid, you will detect echoes in Gru of Dr. Seuss's Grinch and a dozen other cartoon touchstones19. The accent and comic-villain attitude are reminiscent of20 Boris Badenov and Snidely Whiplash from Jay Ward's classic TV cartoon The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. (Vector is a snottier21 version of Mr. Peabody's boy, Sherman.) The light impudence22 of the film's wit harks23 back to Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes, as when a sign proclaims that the Bank of Evil is "formerly Lehman Brothers." (I would have loved it if the sign had said "a.k.a. Goldman Sachs," but satire, when bankrolled24 by a major studio, can go only so far.) The very word despicable is a tribute25 to Daffy, the Warner cartoon duck, who immortally26 mispronounced it in the 1951 Rabbit Fire. ("You're dethpickable! And, and, and pickable!")
(4) The movie marks Universal Studios' first serious attempt to board the CGI-animation gravy train that has poured zillions27 into the coffers of Pixar, DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox's Blue Sky — the team that made the Ice Age movies and Horton Hears a Who!. Chris Meledandri, who supervised the Blue Sky unit, is over at Universal now. With him, he took Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul, the Horton screenwriters, to expand on an idea by Spanish animator Sergio Pablos. Meledandri handed the directing chores to Blue Sky veteran28 Chris Renaud and the French animator Pierre Coffin. The movie was developed by this Spanish-Franco-American team.
(5) That explains the movie's Euro feel: its lithe29 simplicity of line, its occasionally noirish palette30, its pointy rather than round character shapes. Despicable Me has continental cousins — the Czech animation style of the 1950s and '60s and, from 2003, Sylvain Chomet's Oscar-nominated The Triplets of Belleville — at least as close as its more obvious American kin31. For their graphic32 inspiration the filmmakers cite Charles Addams and Edward Gorey, who are among the most European of comic draftsmen, and Cuban artist Antonio Prohías' Mad magazine series "Spy vs. Spy." (They might also have mentioned the Mad cartoonist Sergio Aragones and his comic-book barbarian "Groo the Wanderer.") No wonder that in the central conflict of Gru vs. Vector — essentially a replay of the Cold War arms race — the sympathy goes not to the power-mad young American, who seems like a deranged version of Bill Gates, but to the old man with the Soviet-bloc voice and the Euro-couture33 of turtlenecks34 and jaunty35 scarves.
Kids won't be frightened by the movie (rated PG for fart36 jokes), but they may take to heart the parent problems each of the main characters has to endure. (6)Gru's villainy is traced to a lifetime of lovelessness from his mother (Julie Andrews!), so mean and demeaning37 she'd turn any child into a monster. Vector has become an evil genius in an attempt to please his father. Neither can do much to improve their sad parental situations. Not so the orphans, for whom Gru is their new adoptive daddy. Rather than charm the beast, they pretty much hound38 him into a recognizably human form. They are the Whos to Gru's Grinch, and by the end of the movie it's Christmas.
This is an agreeable confection39 with a few soft spots. Carell's singsong accent twists his dialogue amusingly by shouting in the middle of sentences, but he also is stranded by40 wan retorts41 — "Oh, come on!" "You have got to be kidding me!" "I hate that guy!" — that the DreamWorks writing staff would have punched up with some vernacular42 sparkle. But whenever the plot goes limp43, Despicable Me falls back on the minions, Gru's geek chorus. They're the ones who cue the audience to the absurdity of their master's malevolence44, cheering when he shouts, "We stole the statue of Liberty!", then issuing a collective sigh of disappointment when he adds, "The small one, from Las Vegas." Like Skrat in the Ice Age movies, or the penguins in Madagascar, these adorable scene-stealers probably deserve their own spin-off45 feature. Universal may not have a franchise46 movie in this very pickable cartoon comedy, but they certainly have franchise minions.
Glossary 词汇表
句子解析
(1) After the intense emotional workout of Toy Story 3 — where many young children were too scared to stay for the end, and some of those who did asked, "Daddy, was that a holocaust?" — parents and kids may be looking for an animated feature that's low-maintenance, good-looking and mildly original, and won't plant lingering traumasin the psyches of the wee ones.
解析：这句话的主语是第二个破折号之后的parents and kids 主干应为：parents and kids may be looking for an animated feature. After 后面到parents之前的句子都是时间状语从句，都是指在看完煽情的《玩具总动员3》之后，破折号中间的部分指看《玩具总动员3》的时候孩子们的感受，即他们不敢看结尾，还会提出：“爸爸，那是集体毁灭吗？” feature之后的部分是修饰animated feature的定语，指全家人期待什么样的动画片。这部动画片应该是看起来不费力气的，吸引人的，原创的而且不会给孩子心里造成什么消极影响。很多孩子观看完《玩具总动员3》心里会有一种怀旧的伤感挥之不去，这也是为什么大家想看些搞笑简单电影的原因。
(2) It's the story of a world-class supervillain named Gru (voiced by Steve Carell in a fake, menacingEastern European accent), whose conception of evil is little-boy mischievousness.
解析：主干句为：It’s the story of a world-class supervillain，named Gru是修饰supervillain的分词结构，之所以用named是因为他是被命名为Gru，这种结构比运用who is named Gru要简洁，写作时候要多多运用分词结构，这样既可以避免和后面定语从句的重复，又能达到简洁明了的效果。Whose后面的结构就是修饰Gru的定语从句，指Gru是那种搞小孩子恶作剧并以此为乐的大恶棍。
(3) Lately, though, he's been dwarfed in nastinessby dweebish young Vector (Jason Segel), who managed to swipe the Great Pyramid at Giza.
解析：though放在句中比Although放在句首要自然生动，has been dwarfed是现在完成时的被动语态，意思是被贬低，被嘲弄。要搞清各种时态的被动语态基本结构：一般现在时为：am/is/are done; 现在进行时为 am/is/are being done; 现在完成时为：has/have been done; 一般过去时为：was/were done; 过去进行时为：was/were being done; 过去完成时为：had been done; 一般将来时为：will be done; 情态动词为：should/must/might be done。逗号后面的部分是修饰Vector的定语从句。
(4) The movie marks Universal Studios' first serious attempt to board the CGI-animation gravy train that has poured zillions into the coffers of Pixar, DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox's Blue Sky — the team that made the Ice Age movies and Horton Hears a Who!..
解析：主句为The movie marks Universal Studios' first serious attempt, 意思是电影标志着环球公司首次严肃的尝试，后面是不定式表目的表示尝试做什么即搭上CGI的列车，(CGI是一个动画制造工作室) ，that 后面的结构是修饰train的定语从句，指CGI动画家庭曾经为Pixar, DreamWorks和Fox的账户里面存入无数黄金。而这个CGI正是誉满全球的动画片《冰河时代》的出品工作室。
5) That explains the movie's Euro feel: its lithe simplicity of line, its occasionally noirish palette, its pointy rather than round character shapes.
—and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.(John F. Kennedy)
(6)Gru's villainy is traced to a lifetime of lovelessness from his mother (Julie Andrews!), so mean and demeaning she'd turn any child into a monster.
解析：so mean and demeaning she'd turn any child into a monster这个分句的she前面省略了that,意思是Gru的妈妈如此之刻薄以至于她会把任何一个孩子变成恶魔。
|
