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SYNOPSIS:
Ti labors everyday to provide for his young son Dicky. Dicky
doesn't fit in with his classmates because he wears tattered
clothes and doesn't own the latest electronic gadgets. One
night, Ti searches the junkyard for a special toy for his
son and discovers a mysterious orb. When he brings it home
for Dicky to play with, the orb reveals itself to be a shape-shifting
creature with extraordinary powers. Armed with his new, out-of-this-world
friend, Dicky seizes the opportunity to impress his fellow
students for the first time. But his mischievous pet has ideas
of its own.
MOVIE
REVIEW
Pin your
hopes high on “CJ7” and you might walk away feeling
sore from the expectations. Coming from the man who sealed
the brand of ‘mo-lei-tau’ aka nonsensical humor
in the nineties and whom in recent years brought the house
down with “Shaolin Soccer” and “Kungfu Hustle”,
it’s understandable you expect something more than just
a simple tale of a father and his son.
Stephen
Chow plays Ti, a hard labourer who slogged at construction
sites to provide the best for his only son, Dicky. Although
that means the twosome can only afford having a few veg and
rotten apple as dessert, Ti wants Dicky to achieve far better
than him in life which explains the fact that why Dicky is
sent to a luxurious school in the opening scene. At night,
Ti has to plow the junkyard for useful items which he can
recycle for Dicky’s usage until he incidentally picked
up an extra-terrestrial nicknamed CJ7.
It’s
fairly easy to see which segment of the audience Chow is targeting
for “CJ7”. Majority of the sequences focused mainly
on the antics of Dicky and his new high-tech pet, CJ7. Those
scenes served mainly to entertain the younger crowd with some
jibes at Chow’s previous two works. Written by Chow,
Vincent Kok (who directed a fair share of comedies) and a
team of other four writers, there are still scenes which dragged
on and on and unfortunately suffered from a case of “Where’s
the punchline?”. A good example is the confrontational
scene between Ti and his superior played by Lam Chi Chung.
“CJ7”
on the other hand is brought to live by HK effect house, Menford
Electronics and goes to prove that given a bigger budget and
longer time allowance, the visual effects can be much superior
than Menford’s usual outputs. Newcomer Xu Jiao who did
a male impersonation as Dicky is very much the highlight of
the movie. She’s a natural, gifted actress who doesn’t
need much convincing as the role of a poor deprived young
boy.
According
to Chow, his favourite movie when he was a child was Steven
Spielberg’s “ET”. You can see he’s
paying sort of a tribute to the Spielberg’s classic
here and a significant part of his real-life childhood is
inscribed here as well. Similar trait includes the roaches
hammering game which Chow admitted it was something he does
with his friends after dinner when he was growing up.
Despite
lacking the usual wit and Chow’s brand of dry humor,
I was greatly moved by two particular scenes towards the closing
chapter of the movie. I shall not spoil it here but it goes
to prove that Stephen Chow has grown far further than the
crazy, wild personality he inhibits on the screen for the
pass decade. Do give Chow a chance with his first attempt
at something closer to his heart.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
Only 4 trailers of Sony's releases.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
It’s
a pity that the DVD comes with zero special features but this
Code 3 DVD does comes equipped with the original Cantonese
soundtrack and the dubbed mandarin track that was heard in
the theatrical release. Dialogue is of utmost clarity though
the surround is pretty inactive most of the time. The visual
quality is excellent and I have no qualms about it.
MOVIE
RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Linus Tee
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