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CJ7
Directed by Stephen Chow
Produced by Chow & Chui Po Chu, Han San Ping & Vincent Kok
Written by Chow, Fung Chih Chiang, Lam Fung, Vincent Kok, Sandy Shaw Lai-King, & Tsang Kan Cheong
Director of Photography, Poon Hang Sang
Edited by Angie Lam
Music by Raymond Wong
Released by Sony Pictures Classics
Language: Cantonese with English subtitles
Hong Kong/China. 86 min. Rated PG
With Xu Jiao, Stephen Chow, Kitty Zhang, Lee Sheung Ching, Fun Min Hun, Huang Lei & Lam Tze Chung.

Stephen Chow is on the “hot” list of directors following Kung Fu Hustle, the highest grossing Hong Kong film in history (not that he wasn’t already a blooming cult star of action comedies). Following that worldwide smash hit comes CJ7. In terms of the comedy quota, Chow is still in full-throttle mode, but for this warmhearted film about a family grasping for some hope, think E.T. meets The Bicycle Thief and you might come close to the premise.

Single father Ti (Stephen Chow) and his son Dicky (Xu Jiao, in her, that’s right her, feature debut) live in a rundown, cockroach-infested shack right in the midst of garbage heap. Ti works as much and as hard as he can at his construction job so he can send Dicky to a high-class private school. But the boy has holes in his shoes, wears a dirty school uniform, and is constantly berated by well-off bullies (save for a twice-every-kid’s-size girl who befriends little Dicky).

It’s by total luck then that Ti, in trying to get something for Dicky that will impress him as much as the latest hip and expensive new toy, the CJ1, finds an odd green ball in the junkyard. At first, Dicky isn’t impressed. The poor kid wonders: what is it besides a bubbly green ball of goo?

Of course, it isn’t just a gooey green ball, but a little alien puppy, which Dicky names CJ7, and quite simply the most enchanting Asian fantasy figure since Totoro. After witnessing the astonishing powers that the little pup possesses, Dicky dreams of his new pet going to town kicking the tails and taking names of a mean old alley dog and the school bullies. While his dream turns out not to be quite real, this is just the kind of adrenaline-fueled sequence, pumped up by Poon Hang Sang’s exuberant and careening cinematography, that leaves many American counterparts (i.e. Spy Kids) in the dust. And it’s not simply for the Looney Tunes-inspired chaos. Because of the empathy that surrounds this tyke, scenes that should be schmaltzy come off natural and finely tuned.

And the zaniness works just as well for us hard-bitten cynical adults as it will for wide-eyed kids. (According to the press notes, Chow based the economic status of the father and son on his childhood, a state just barely a step removed from squalor.) With a sense of playful comic timing, he’s made a work that plays on emotions truthfully. There is some final-act drama that pops up, yet the film doesn’t pander to the audience. On the contrary, Chow concocts a denouement that leaves the audience not crying but filled with the sort of joy that is the darndest thing to admit as a critic: I felt like a little tot again. jack Gattanella
March 7, 2008