Review | Successor movie review: baffling Chinese comedy appears to offer critique of state control
- In a fictional Chinese city an impoverished father takes a donkey cart to work. All is not as it seems, though, in curious comedy Successor
2/5 stars
Family comedy Successor, directed by Yan Fei and Peng Damo, has been Chinese cinema’s surprise success of 2024. Since opening on July 16, the film has taken 3.13 billion yuan (US$437 million) at the mainland Chinese box office, far surpassing anything else currently in cinemas.
Set in the fictional Chinese city of Slinkytown, Successor stars the filmmakers’ regular leading man Shen Teng as Ma Chenggang, a hardworking yet impoverished family man that the country’s prosperity has seemingly passed by.
He lives in a dilapidated courtyard house in the centre of the city, with his wife (Ma Li), young son Jiye (Xiao Bochen), and mother-in-law. Chenggang rides a donkey and cart to work, while the women slave away at home and the studious Jiye runs back and forth from the local school.
Almost immediately, however, it is revealed that this is all a ruse. Chenggang is actually a hugely successful business magnate overseeing a vast empire, and everyone in the community is seemingly in his employ.