Chapter 124: The Fake Son-in-Law Arrives (4)
When Yang Jiayao and Xia Yingyun, who arrived late, also arrived at the scene, many of the reporters surrounding Li Sishi immediately rushed off to interview the two big-name new pork vendors.
With everyone present, Li Sishi began preparing to join the film crew to watch the movie she starred in.
Although I was already very familiar with my performance during filming, the post-production editing by the editors, along with various background music and special effects, gave those familiar things a completely new feel.
Of course, in addition to "reviewing" her performance at the premiere, she can also see the audience's reaction to her performance—and this latter point is also the key for her to observe the aesthetics of the times and then adjust her performance according to the current public preferences.
This time, Li Sishi's seat was arranged to the left of Cheng Erjian and the right of Shang Hanyou, so it was another "surrounded by beauties" position...
After silently imagining this funny description in her mind, Li Sishi walked to her seat and sat down calmly amidst the presence of two familiar faces on either side.
After the images gradually appeared on the screen, the noise in the room gradually subsided.
The opening scene of "The Fake Son-in-Law" depicts the unexpected encounter and acquaintance between Lin Zhixia, a female detective played by Xia Yingyun, and Wu Dian, a male escort played by Yang Jiayao, on the street.
Xia Yingyun has been filming mostly martial arts and action movies in Hong Kong recently. The fact that the director arranged for her to perform a series of action scenes at the beginning of the film was undoubtedly the fat director trying to capitalize on Xia Yingyun's "latest popularity". And the choreographed martial arts fight scenes, just as the fat director expected, won a lot of applause from the very beginning.
After successfully capturing the thugs with Wu Dian's cooperation, Lin Zhixia obtained Wu Dian's business card, thus learning that he was a male escort at a karaoke bar—in layman's terms, a male escort who didn't sell his body.
Opinions on professions vary, but the profession of male escort paired with the name "Wu Dian (唔掂)," a homophone that sounds like it specifically refers to a man's poor sexual function, coupled with Yang Jiayao's greasy wink despite being handsome, and lines like "My name is Wu Dian, the electric eye that's so captivating it could easily produce a ten-thousand-ton oil field," creates a uniquely absurd and hilarious scene.
After the storyline of the eldest sister, Lin Zhixia, the information about the five members of the Lin family is gradually revealed to the audience through Lin Zhixia's voice-over introduction.
The plot unfolds along the timeline: Lin Zhixia catches a thief at night, goes home to rest, and has breakfast in the morning; her second older sister, Lin Xiaoqiu, has also finished breakfast.
She went to work at the clinic, where she began her first encounter with "the last virgin in the port city."
Cheng Erjian has played many roles of innocent men who are so naive that they worry their whole family. As Lu Shiren (an honest man) both on and off screen, his character is someone brought to a blind date by his own mother. Unfortunately, the two missed each other at the clinic, but then met again by mistake at the gym.
In this scene, Lu Shiren's cousin and his friends pooled their money to hire a prostitute to "broaden his horizons." As a result, Lin Xiaoqiu was mistaken for the prostitute because she was wearing the same sportswear as the prostitute.
In order to get rid of the entanglement of his cronies, Lu Shiren secretly offered to pay double the price for Lin Xiaoqiu to act with him. Lin Xiaoqiu, who was used to seeing people make a fool of themselves by coveting her beauty, did not know if it was true or not, but since she was getting paid and it would be fun, she agreed, remembering that she always carried pepper spray.
Then, in order to get rid of those bad friends, Lu Shiren really lived up to his name by driving her around on the road for most of the night... This kind of pure and innocent straight man's behavior of wasting opportunities immediately caused a burst of laughter.
Lu Shiren was attracted to Lin Xiaoqiu's beauty and the tragic backstory she had fabricated, while Lin Xiaoqiu also had feelings for this adorably naive and innocent man. Before leaving, the two exchanged contact information, which seemed to mark the beginning of another love story.
On the third day, Lin Lingdong, the third sister played by Li Sishi, walked out of the elderly care center and went to the street to meet her current assistance target.
Hong Kong comedies often play with place names and personal names, and this "Elderly Care Centre" has elicited plenty of laughter from those who get the joke—the so-called "carefree" aspect...
Most people understand the implication: in a port city where naming is somewhat influenced by feng shui and geomancy, such an auspicious name is only found in comedy films and television dramas...
The first two pairings were somewhat dramatic, but Lin Lingdong's segment made many viewers feel as if they were seeing scenes from their own lives: after all, there are really a lot of social workers and gangsters in Hong Kong, and you can always see a few when you go out.
However, Lin Lingdong in the play is not very lucky. The old woman she helps is a con artist who pretends to be lame to swindle money from kind-hearted people. She tries to persuade her many times, but to no avail.
The old woman, Long Po, seemed to like this beautiful, kind social worker who wouldn't expose her scam. While pretending to be lame and begging, she told Long Po about her son, saying that she was a widow raising her son alone and it was very difficult, so she had to resort to scamming to make a living. She also mentioned that her son had loved math since he was little, and she had finally raised him with great difficulty, and that he had a good job...
It is also related to "mathematics..."
"Is he working as an accountant now?" Lin Lingdong asked.
"No, he's in charge of collecting debts, negotiating debts, and negotiating in the club..."
Before Granny Long could finish speaking, the gangster "E-moon," played by Shang Hanyou, arrived with his voice preceding his arrival, shouting, "Mother!"
Faced with Lin Lingdong's advice to spend more time with Granny Long, he immediately said impatiently, "I'm busy with work, how can I have time to spend with her? You're a social worker, right? Help me play mahjong with my old mother, and put whatever she loses on my tab!"
As for Lin Lingdong's question about the safety of his involvement in gangs, E-moon simply took her to the scene of his debt collection and said that his job was safe and easy, and there was nothing to worry about.
Unfortunately, man proposes, God disposes. This time, the person who owed the money was a tough nut to crack. He immediately called a group of his brothers and started fighting with the debt collectors brought by E-mosquito. In the melee, E-mosquito, who was stabbed twice, could only cling to the terrified Lin Lingdong beside her and shout loudly for her to take her away quickly.
After a life-or-death chase, the two seemed to have grown closer. When Lin Lingdong took him home, he specifically reminded him, "You pretty girls shouldn't come here often. The people here are mixed up and it's dangerous!"
After discovering from this encounter that E-mosquito wasn't entirely beyond redemption, Lin Lingdong inevitably began to pay more attention to this kind-hearted gangster.
The three independent storylines begin to converge as the old father of the Lin family feigns illness.
E-mosquito originally didn't want to agree to Lin Lingdong's request to pretend to be her boyfriend, but unfortunately, he drew a bad lot in the club sports meet, and had to find an opportunity to enter the Lin family and secretly steal the account books of a big shot who had recently been arrested by the eldest sister, Lin Zhixia.
Lin Zhixia, who is clear about right and wrong, is suspected by her cunning boss at the police station. Therefore, she does not hand over the ledger directly, but waits until the big boss goes to court to bring it as evidence to testify against the big boss who has committed many serious crimes.
As long as the ledger doesn't appear, it will be difficult for the police to convict the big boss. Therefore, this club sports meet was specially set up to select the best person in the club to steal the ledger from the Lin family.
Thus, Wu Dian, the fake boyfriend and real male escort who was paid for a month by the eldest sister Lin Zhixia, Lu Shiren, who was tricked into helping with the act by the second sister Lin Xiaoqiu, and E Wen, who agreed to pretend to be Lin Lingdong's boyfriend in order to steal the account book, successfully gathered at the Wu family's dinner time.
The dinner party naturally had many laugh-out-loud moments, but the elderly father, Lin Duo...
Zhu wasn't easily fooled. Seeing that her three daughters and "boyfriend" were acting strangely, she asked them to stay in her room for half an hour and work together as a pair to make a gift for him.
The real purpose was to separate themselves and then eavesdrop outside the room to see if these "boyfriends" who had been silent before but suddenly appeared tonight were real or fake.
Upon entering the room, E-mosquito immediately used a method to knock out Lin Lingdong, who was doing handicrafts. Then, she placed the unconscious Lin Lingdong on the bed, ran to the balcony, climbed over the wall, and went to the balcony of Lin Zhixia's room next door.
In the process of dealing with the eldest sister Lin Zhixia, E-mosquito undoubtedly followed the laws of comedy, causing a lot of hilarious and absurd situations, accidentally injuring others and even himself throughout the entire process, but failing to inflict any harm on the agile eldest sister Lin Zhixia...
Moreover, while searching through the ledgers, he accidentally dropped the aphrodisiac he had just confiscated from his younger brother that afternoon, which he planned to destroy the next day, into his eldest sister's room.
The ledger wasn't found, but it led to a drunken night for Lin Zhixia, the eldest sister who was being bullied at work, and her fake boyfriend Wu Dian, indirectly making this strong woman and weak man a couple.
After Wu Dian's old house caught fire overnight, he decided to give up his career for love and went to the police station to harass Lin Zhixia. Naturally, this is another hilarious comedy about a strong woman and a weak man.
Unable to steal the ledger, E-mosquito had no choice but to hide at home to avoid trouble. The moment he opened his eyes, he saw Lin Lingdong doing housework at his house.
After her mother, Granny Long, explained, E-moon finally understood that Lin Lingdong had mistakenly thought he had done something bad to her. As a result, she had no choice but to treat E-moon as her future husband and had come to the Zhang family to familiarize herself with life after marriage...
"Are you kidding me? It's been less than half an hour, what could I possibly do to her?!" Whether it was for the sake of leaving an impression on his sweetheart or for the sake of a man's dignity, E-mosquito had to jump up and explain himself clearly for this question.
Although he had gradually developed feelings for this naive and adorable young social worker during their interactions, he felt that the two of them—one a gangster and the other a good girl—were completely mismatched. So he kept trying to reject Lin Lingdong's advances, and in the end, he really drove her away. That's when he cried to his elderly mother, Granny Long, saying that he missed her...
Grandma Long persuaded him to reform for love, while on the other hand, Lin Lingdong, who had left the Zhang family, changed into a "troublemaker" look that "gangsters" should like with the help of a group of elders, wanting to change herself for love.
The subsequent plot involves the two changing themselves for each other at a tea restaurant negotiation. When Li Sishi's "fierce girl" look appeared, many people at the scene felt refreshed: they were used to seeing Li Sishi's well-behaved girl look, but this dark and sexy look was the first time they had seen it.
The ripped holes in the fishnet stockings perfectly highlighted the "fierceness" of a "tough girl"—even though in reality she was just a pretentious, soft-spoken sweetheart...
After the dust settled on their relationship, E-mosquito, determined to turn over a new leaf, told Lin Lingdong the whole truth.
Lin Lingdong originally wanted to take him home to apologize to his eldest sister, but when they got home, they first ran into his two older sisters, whose romantic relationships had also been completed, along with their two future brothers-in-law.
Then, after explaining everything clearly, the three young couples faced their stepmother, who had been blatantly bullying their younger brother Lin Fengchun at home.
The con artist stepmother, who came to swindle money, has been corresponding with the elderly father, Lin Duozhu, for many years. Now, she has finally entered the family home and is just one step away from registering her marriage. In her daily life, she often acts like an elder and freeloads off the Lin family.
Of course, the four children of the Lin family only paid lip service to her, but secretly they often told their father that they didn't like this future stepmother and kept reminding him that his future stepmother might have ulterior motives. Unfortunately, Lin Duozhu had never seen the true face of his deceitful stepmother and was blinded by love, so he ignored all the children's good advice.
Logically, since the marriage registration wasn't legally recognized, the fraudulent stepmother shouldn't have any say in the children's affairs. However, seeing these three future sons-in-law come to her door, the fraudulent stepmother, thinking she could make an extra fortune, immediately started talking about the dowry, demanding an exorbitant amount of one million yuan, one hundred loads of wedding cakes, and one hundred tables of banquet for each daughter...
This infuriated E-mosquito so much that he almost had a professional fit, grabbing her collar to give the con artist stepmother a good "talk"—luckily, Wu Dian and Lu Shiren, who were nearby, quickly pulled him back.
At this time, the big boss who was to be tried in court the next day sent a large group of thugs to break into the Lin family under the cover of darkness, intending to kill them to silence them and steal the account books.
This scene naturally echoes the opening action sequence, where the three young couples each display their unique skills, along with the Lin family father and son teaming up to deal with most of the gangsters who stormed in, in a mix of humor and suspense.
Thanks to the united efforts of the Lin family in fighting back, only one of the gangsters remained. Looking around, he realized he had kidnapped his con artist stepmother, who was hiding behind the sofa, and taken her hostage…
After being used as a shield in the chaos, the elderly father, Lin Duozhu, realized...
The true face of this pen pal who had been corresponding with her for many years was revealed. The family pretended to say, "Please don't hurt her," and then quickly closed the door.
As a Lunar New Year film, the final ending must naturally be a happy and fulfilling one.
So, in the now peaceful home, the elderly father, Lin Duozhu, said that he would no longer be infatuated with his deceitful stepmother, and also revealed the truth that he did not actually have cancer and had been faking his illness to get his daughters to date early.
Seeing their father's sincere apology and his heartfelt words that he didn't care whether they had boyfriends or not, as long as they were doing well, the three daughters forgave their father for his momentary lapse in judgment, and the four of them happily embraced each other.
The final scene is a hilarious reunion where the three future sons-in-law, who are afraid of being abandoned, and Lin Xiaodi, the only single guy on the scene, eagerly rush over to hug each other.
This kind of popcorn-style Lunar New Year comedy never seems to require any brainpower; it's purely for fun and enjoyment. The whole movie is filled with laughter, the plot is decent, and the lead actors are all handsome men and beautiful women. As a result, the media can already foresee its good box office performance.
However, amidst the chorus of wishes for the film's box office success, a figure wearing thick glasses kept a close eye on Li Sishi and Shang Hanyou, who were standing together.
The almost tangible gaze lingered for a while on Li Sishi's waist, which was concealed by the shawl. Finally, on the side, where the shawl could no longer hide, the reporter caught a glimpse of the faint curves of Li Sishi's slender waist, which had been the subject of much discussion since the Miss Hong Kong pageant. Immediately, the bespectacled reporter began to make a bold guess: Why was she in such a hurry to pick out her wedding dress? Could it be...?
There's no way these two would appear in a store like this for no reason!
So it turns out they were using a feint to deceive others, and because they couldn't control their emotions and didn't take proper precautions, they ended up "getting pregnant"!
Thinking back to the reports of Li Sishi becoming a wealthy heiress through her mother's remarriage, while her idol Wen Huihui was tricked by that scumbag Li Zhen with a "diamond ring" that didn't actually have any diamonds, and how these two were eventually compared by gossip-loving Hong Kong people; and then thinking about Li Sishi's recent situation where she was suspected of using her relationship with Zhuang Menghua to outshine Wen Huihui at the Jade Solid Gold Awards...
At that moment, the bespectacled reporter felt a layering of old and new grudges, and his gaze toward that direction grew increasingly intense.
Back then, in order to speak out for his idol, he dared to launch a fierce attack on Li Zhen in his own magazine, and was eventually retaliated against by Li Zhen and his magazine "Yea" with a heavy stone.
The fact that the crab had forcefully reversed the course of the battle was enough to make him feel frustrated.
But when people encounter setbacks, they either become despondent or become more courageous after each setback.
The bespectacled reporter, who considered himself the type to get stronger with setbacks, looked Li Sishi up and down again: he had indeed been momentarily confused when he went up against Li Zhen, who owned "Yea," but the Li Sishi in front of him was an artist, and a young one at that, with powerful backers, so she had always been regarded as a relatively good female artist by the citizens of Hong Kong.
Shang Hanyou is also a currently popular and powerful superstar.
Once this shocking revelation of a secret relationship and premarital pregnancy is exposed, even if Li Sishi handles the aftermath well, she will still be significantly affected...
If Wen Huihui, a gentle yet opinionated woman, knew that her brainless fan was planning to pull off this self-destructive act in an unexpected situation, she would probably be so angry that she would cry and want to personally slap him.
Meanwhile, the bespectacled reporter, still believing he was "avenging" his idol, pushed his way through the crowd with a self-righteous passion and finally managed to get close to Li Sishi and Shang Hanyou, who were being interviewed.
Watching Shang Hanyou, who always responds flawlessly to questions from the media, answer a reporter's question about whether he and Li Sishi's natural on-screen chemistry might have led to a romantic relationship.
The bespectacled reporter immediately revealed a triumphant smile in the shadows, as if saying, "My chance has come."
"That's going too far. If I had to have a flirtatious moment with my co-star every time I filmed a romantic scene, wouldn't I be known as a notorious womanizer in the industry?" Anyway, he'd already become known as "October Mustard" before filming even started, so when faced with this question, he skillfully dodged the question while simultaneously shifting the topic back to himself. "Besides, my main focus right now is developing my career; I don't have much time to think about anything else..."
“Yes, we’ve all been so busy with work lately. I not only have to develop my career, but I also have to take care of my studies. Let alone going out with people or trying to date, I don’t even have enough time to rest…” Li Sishi chimed in.
Before she could finish speaking and before the reporter interviewing them could continue, a strange-sounding voice, loud enough to echo throughout the room, suddenly cut in from the side.
"But I received a message saying that someone saw you and Hanyou picking out a wedding dress and a traditional Chinese wedding gown at a well-established wedding clothing store yesterday—"
The drawn-out final syllable seemed as if it was afraid that others might not have heard it clearly.
However, the fact that he had shouted so loudly, which was premeditated, coupled with the fact that the news was so earth-shattering, meant that anyone present at the moment who was not hearing would have been drawn to look in his direction.
"And why are you wearing a shawl all night, Ms. Li? It's not even that cold tonight..." The bespectacled reporter immediately launched what he thought was a well-deserved follow-up attack, "Hey, it seems like your famously slim waist has gotten a little thicker..."
Seeing that his words had captured everyone's attention, the bespectacled reporter became even more enthusiastic, shoving the microphone in front of the two men and bombarding them with questions—
"So—are you two really in love? Are you getting married because you're pregnant?!"
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