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CJ7

 ABOUT THE MOVIE

Genre: Sci-Fi/Comedy
Starring: Stephen Chow, Kitty Zhang Yuqi, Xu Jiao, Lam Chi Chung,
Lee Sheung Ching
Director: Stephen Chow
Rating: PG
Year Made: 2008

 

 


 SPECIAL FEATURES

- NIL

 


 TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Languages: Mandarin/Cantonese/
Thai
Subtitles: English/Chinese/Thai/
Korean/Indonesian
Aspect Ratio: 2.40 Widescreen
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Running Time: 1 hr 24 mins
Region Code: 3
Distributor: Origin Entertainment
Official Website:
www.cj7-movie.com

 

 

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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This review is made possible with the kind support from Origin Entertainment

 



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