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'CJ7'

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BY JAN STUART | jan.stuart@newsday.com

March 7, 2008

Child actress Xu Jiao plays a boy whose alien toy puppy has special powers. (Sony Pictures Classics photo / March 6, 2008)

It is safe to say that no one makes movies quite like Hong Kong's clown impresario Stephen Chow. What goes on in a mind that churns out "Kung Fu Hustle," a freewheeling action comedy that goosed the anti-gravity conventions of the martial arts genre to a raucous, Road-Runner-cartoon fare-thee-well?

For all its campy screwball antics, "Kung Fu Hustle" wore a heart under its lollipop-colored sleeve. That winning juxtaposition of looniness and tenderness is amplified to gratifying effect in "CJ7," a kid-friendly fantasy comedy that goes for big laughs and big emotions, scoring big time on both counts.

"CJ7's" oppressed hero is Dicky Chow (rubber-faced wonder Xu Jiao), a poor, smudge-faced little boy who lives in cockroach-ridden squalor with his widower father, Ti (Chow). Ti toils at a construction job so that his son may attend a cushy private school.

Like his dad, who is obliged to eat humble pie dished out regularly by a demeaning boss, Dicky must grin and bear the daily verbal batterings of his teacher, Mr. Cao, along with the derision of the rich-kids clique.

In the midst of scavenging clothes and broken appliances from the junkyard, Ti comes across a green, orblike object; unable to afford expensive mechanical toys for his son, he presents the ball to Dicky as a plaything. The orb turns out to be a lot more high-tech than either of them could have imagined: inside is a furry, alien toy puppy with special powers.

The echoes of "E.T." in the creature's spindly fingers, bulbous eyes and anointed name are not accidental: Chow was inspired by that sci-fi classic as a youngster. But Steven Spielberg would never have consented to the riotous initiation of tailspinning, neck-twisting and pulverizing that CJ7 is subjected to, which is more suggestive of soft-core "Tom and Jerry"-ish sadism than Industrial Light & Magic whimsy.

Some might say that the greatest indignity is making CJ7 boogie to a disco version of "Sunny." This mindlessly retro recording eventually gets under your skin, trust me, as does the loopy carnival of human predators that keeps life interesting for Dicky, his father and his seemingly indestructible alien dog. In Stephen Chow's malleable universe, bullies have a way of changing stripes at the drop of the hat, a self-redeeming quality which keeps it interesting for us as well.

None of "CJ7's" CG-generated stunts would matter without the Chaplin-esque talents of Xu Jiao, who may be the most winning child actor from Hong Kong cinema since "Yi Yi's" memorably expressive Jonathan Chang. I was flattened to find out that Xu is not a captivating 8-year-old boy but, as it happens, a captivating 8-year-old girl. Child actors in drag: Do kids fables get any more subversive, or surprising, than this?

CJ7 (PG). An extraterrestrial puppy changes the horizon for a poor schoolboy. That rare breed: a children's fantasy with a personality all its own. Daffy and footloose, the Stephen ("Kung Fu Hustle") Chow way. In Mandarin with English subtitles. 1:26 (language, thematic material, some rude humor and brief smoking). At the AMC Empire 25, Sunshine and AMC/ Loews Lincoln Square, Manhattan.