Ti (Stephen Chow) is a poor single father working in a construction site unable to buy his son Dickie (Xu Jiao) nice things. In fact, the majority of the boy’s toys, clothing and school supplies all come from the man’s late night trips to the city dump, the best he can offer the kid a pair of ratty tennis shoes so on the verge of falling apart his physical education teachers don’t allow child to take part in class.

Xiu Jiao and friend in Sony Pictures Classics' CJ7

Things change one evening when Ti brings home a new toy, a seemingly innocuous green orb with an odd circular antenna that leaves Dickie more than a bit perplexed. And for good reason, it turns out, as this ball isn’t really a ball at all, it instead a small alien creature with a fuzzy head and a gelatinous green body the mischievous youngster nicknames CJ7 after one of his rich kid schoolmates computerized possessions.

With CJ7 in tow Dickie decides to show the world he’s more than a poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks, sure his new pet has magical powers which will allow his to gain school-wide popularity and ace every single one of his teacher’s difficult tests. But dreams of grandeur seldom work out like you think they will, this one no exception, and the only thing bringing an alien to school does is create havoc and chaos. There is a lesson to be learned here, of course, and before all is said and done Dickie will gain a newfound respect for his father he never expected, all thanks to CJ7 and magical sacrifice no one is ever remotely prepared for.

Those expecting another imaginative whack-a-doo martial arts spaghetti western action fun-fest like Kung Fu Hustle from writer, director and star Chow’s latest oddity CJ7 are going to be in for something of a surprise. Sure there is action, but it’s more of the Steven Spielberg E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial kiddy school variety than it is anything else, the chaotically adult sensibilities of the former feature given way to the far more family-friendly obnoxious weirdness that revered American filmmaker is known for.

This isn’t a bad thing, but it is a different thing, and at times the style and tone of this kind of entertainment falls just outside of the usually confident and self-assured Chow’s grasp. There is a herky-jerky quality to the picture that’s highly disconcerting, some scenes and subplots going in directions so needlessly pointless they almost feel as if they’re included just to pad out the thin screenplay to barely feature length. In other words, this is a highly messy production, and as much as I want to embrace everything that the director has up his immensely intriguing sleeves sometimes a person just has to admit defeat and move on.

Thankfully that still isn’t the case, because when CJ7 does work it does so brilliantly. There is an astonishing dream sequence that simply must be seen to be believed, the whole ten minute or so bit taking me back to my own wild-eyed childhood and reminding me of all the outlandish bits of creative daydreaming I sometimes would find myself reveling in. It is almost as if Chow has tapped straight into the pre-adolescent consciousness in a way I’ve never seen before, and for this bit and this bit alone I’m more than willing to give his latest effort a more than heartfelt pass.

Granted, it helps considerably that Jiao is a natural in front of the camera, his relationship with the Furby-meets-Gummi-Bear CJ7 fresh, funny and highly believable. Chow, also, is as good as ever (even if he’s nothing more than a supporting player this time around), adding just the right amount of caringly dramatic certainty to a story that’s really nothing more than an engagingly forgettable piece of childlike fluff.

A huge part of me wishes the filmmaker could have figured out a better, more satisfactory way to bring things to a conclusion. An even larger part of me can’t help but feel the film is really nothing more than a slightly enjoyable (if highly benign) throwaway piece, a little bit of silliness for the director to play with before moving on to a more thoroughly engaging and satisfactory project. So much of this one sits there in idle mode looking for something to do, and even at 86 short minutes there’s enough padding going on here to fill an entire pillowcase with downy white feathers. 

Still, kids should eat it up, and Chow is far too talented to craft anything that could ever be considered a disaster. There is, in fact, much delight to be found here, and while CJ7 isn’t quite interstellar it’s still good enough to achieve a kind of satisfactory liftoff so many other family features can only dream of achieving.

Film Rating: êê1/2 (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  CJ7 Theatrical Trailer