CJ7

directed by Stephen Chow
written by Stephen Chow and Chi Keung Fung
Hong Kong 2008




Stephen Chow has always made grown-up movies that appeal to kids. Or maybe it's kids' movies that appeal to grown-ups. Or maybe his brand of unabashed stooge slapstick, a commitment to the campiest of visual effects, and an eye for the contemporary despite leanings toward a cultural universality (literally this time), are just the elements that happen to get results across the age spectrum. Chow's grown up characters, most notably the ones he himself plays, act in many ways like children, while his children fill the opposite role. And there are enough smarts, formal attention, and cinematic references included in the overall zaniness to keep the arthouse snobs coming back. It might sound a little like I'm describing the Pixar regime, but (thankfully!) there's an essential difference between Chow's work and that steaming pile of pandering Disney crap. Pixar films play to the lowest common denominator through a diffuse self-censorship made up of market research, focus groups, and tested material. Stephen Chow's films, despite their whimsy, take a large amount of risk, as many of the jokes don't land, the effects are at times over-the-top, and even narrative flow is interrupted in the name of whatever greater cinematic awesomeness seems to fit at the time. Where Chow's recognizable themes are used to sell a formal--and often personal--cinematic vision, Disney's sale is not quite as noble.

But CJ7 doesn't succeed the way Shaolin Soccer and certainly Kung-Fu Hustle do. For one, there's a morality tale happening, structured something like an Aesop Fable, that is never reconciled with the story. A remarkable and hilarious Jiao Xu plays Dicky, the kid whose adherence to a working class ethical code is blown apart with the introduction of a high-tech toy. There are some beautiful (and funny) allusions to the corrosive nature of power, but ultimately the moral material, which was loaded on so thickly from the outset, is either lost to melodrama during the father's accident, or a messy plot wrap-up during CJ7's exit. As usual, though, Chow's best moments come when he detaches from a conventional structure (Ieaving Pixar in the dust), and uses the elements of film like a kid would a Lego set. The closet-to-galaxy sequence is incredible, part DirecTV commercial, another part Flight of the Navigator. Dicky's father's 12 by 12-foot shack in the junkyard is ridiculous yet picture perfect (All the shots are from overhead! There's literally nowhere to put the camera! Amazing..). But Chow's struggle with narrative reconciliation is a losing battle. The attempt to ground such playful segments like Dicky's fantasy victories into a kind of plot framework is futile, and what was hilarious a second before suddenly becomes jarring. As usual, the supporting cast is perfectly side-splitting, and in this case gold stars go to Shing-Cheung Lee's role as the pathetic Mr. Cao. Chow's move away from the ensemble conventions is in this case what muddles the film, though there's a touching personal story in there somewhere.