CJ

Stephen Chow, as a director anyhow, has a pension for genre-jumping though his picture palace is based almost solely on the idea of frenzy. Admittedly, my knowledge of this peculiar Chinese director-writer-actor is relegated to his American-released, pictures only I'm calling it as I realise it. Chow's most relevant hit, 2004's Kung Fu Hustle, gained notoriety based completely on the fact that it was, pound-for-pound, the craziest action film to come along in years. In a more minor way, the same can be said for his Shaolin Soccer: Even the most careless of Disney sports outings hasn't resulted in something as playful as Chow's concoction. The man's prowess comes from being half-animated and mostly insane.


For these reasons and a few more, CJ7, Chow's excursion into child-friendly filmmaking, comes cancelled as beleaguered, if not irrefutably endearing. Ti (Chow) works as a construction worker in Hong Kong and spends his nights rooting just about in garbage piles for things he can pay back for his son Dicky (played by actress Xu Jiao). It's under i particular pile of humiliated televisions and discarded wear that Ti finds a UFO that quickly zooms away after expelling a little green River ball with a lowly circle on the top.


After a few tosses and some expected fidgeting with the small circle, the ball morphs into a little puppet in battlefront of Dicky's eyes, a furry alien-puppy that Dicky imagines will be able to beat up the meanest weenie in all of China, create technological advances in test unsporting, and pattern bionic footwear that would allow Dicky to one-up his schoolmates. As it ends up, CJ7 lav only recreate objects: a busted electrical fan, a rotted apple, a few soured relationships.


Chow has never been afraid of convention, a fact apparent by his tempting embracing of genre schematics. Both Soccer and Hustle are structured like a 12 other activity flicks or sports-story retreads, but instead of being laid with red brick and cement, Chow's features are built with silly putty, dynamite, and peanut butter. This delirious vitality still courses through his latest movie but the degree has changed. Instead of expectations being upstaged, they ar merely tickled and given a good mussing.


As with his deuce previous efforts, the shining gem in CJ7 is the graphic design and animation. Certainly no Mogwai, CJ7 withal is a creative