Shadik Newkirk Great Movie. Creative, unpredictable, humorous.The kids love this movie. They watch it once a day.I like how it has encouragement to do good and school.Issues at school and all the groups at school.A MUST SEE movie.I won't say anymore.Just that you should watch it.This should be aired in the movies in the US.It's great!! I suggest it for any parents with kids and even parents.Underrated! If you can buy the DVD it has some good behind the scenes stuff and some big surprises.

lngarrison I love this director, Steven Chow ("Kung Fu Hustle" and "Shaolin Soccer"), and I was expecting a better film. Watching "CJ7" was extremely painful. This film surprisingly evoked nationalistic pride in being an American and having different values. This is not the "E.T." feel good movie nor is it an interesting and beautiful, gut-wrenching movie like the Swedish movie "My Life as a Dog", although it had tried many attempts to redeem itself. The characters are mean and self-serving, promoting the value of "being useful" over common sense logic such as "self reliance". ***WARNING!!!***SPOILER ALERT***DETAILS OF MOVIE BELOW*** CJ7 starts out with a very sad tale of a mother-less child who lives in a dump with his father who is a construction worker. The father spends his hard earned money on a private school that he can't afford and forgoes basic necessities such as food, shelter, and clothing so his son can go to this school and have the opportunity to learn. The father never studied in school and constantly reminds his son that they are poor because he is uneducated and can't get a better job.The son, Dickey, is ridiculed at school because he comes to school dirty, his shoes and school uniform is from the dumpster, and it is obvious that he is poor. Nonetheless, like all humans, we all yearn to be accepted.One day, the child who bullies Dickey, comes to school with a very cool toy, a robotic dog named "CJ" and evokes jealous from Dickey. Later while Dickey and his father are watching cartoons in a storefront window, Dickey runs off inside to the toy store and screams for the "CJ" toy. The father feels awful for spanking the boy to let go of the toy and shame that he cannot buy the toy.Cut to a scene where the father is in the dump looking for better shoes for the boy. In his discoveries, the father runs into a UFO that leaves a nice green ball that the father brings back to Dickie. He claims it's a better toy than CJ.The best scene of this movie is the scene where the green ball is about to hatch and Dickey witnesses the ball hatching and has hallucinations throughout the process. After the hatching, Dickey then dreams that the friendly, magical alien (who he thinks is a toy with batteries) will create additional magical electronic devices to make him smarter, stronger, better, etc...at school.The reality is that the green alien dog like character cannot do that..instead the dog takes a dump in his hands (is this suppose to be funny?) and then also has exploding diarrhea's out of fear (is this suppose to be funny as well?). Dickey abuses the dog, throws it away in a trash can at school, and then has regrets.The dog only wants to please its master.This is where the senses of culture clashes. As an Asian-American that understands Confucian philosophy, I do no value the class hierarchy that animal must obey men and that the younger generation of men must always blindly obey the older generation without question and without doubt.It is painful to watch the dog (alien or not) to be abused by everyone until the end, when the dog sacrifices it's own life to the elder of the family (the father). In death, the dog revered and respected.Throughout the movie, it is even more painful to watch the son suffer for his father's pride. The father's boss states that his own son goes to public school, why shouldn't Dickey? Dickey is failing and "cheating" in school and his father stubbornly wastes his money on the expensive school where Dickey is not learning. Dickey's father is too busy trying to keep up with appearances. In the end, even if the father is brought back to life by the dog, the father is still a loser, poor, and can't get a date. Dickey is still dumb and picked on at school. However, CJ7 is self-sacrificing (another Confucian value) and dead. The earth is also invaded by CJ7s...what should be a happy ending is just awfully contrived.Steven Chow's next movie should be a horror film called "Revenge of the CJ7s" and it would be about cute fuzzy dog aliens avenging the death of the first CJ7.

David Athay Given that this was written as a kids film I think it absolutely hits the mark and then some, but if you are expecting Kung Fu Hustle's biting humor or the physical comedy of Shaolin Soccer then you find it here (at least not all).The film made me laugh and it made me cry (but then I am a total sap and prone to crying). I watched it to make sure it was OK to show to my kids. After watching it I would have no problem showing it to any kid, although as was mentioned by another reviewer you might want to be there to cuddle with the kids when the sad bits hit.Looking forward to Chow's next venture. This will be one more of his DVDs to end up on my shelf.

funkyfry I've seen both of Stephen Chow's excellent films that were distributed in America, "Shaolin Soccer" and "Kung Fu Hustle", and so I wasn't about to be dissuaded from seeing this film by negative reviews of "CJ7" such as the one that our local San Francisco Chronicle printed. Perhaps a word of warning is in order for this movie, so that nobody goes to see it or rents it hoping for a kung fu action film. This is more like Stephen Chow's attempt to make a Spielberg type of film, though I found it more enjoyable than any of Spielberg's recent films. It's a movie primarily for kids but which also aims to entertain adults.The story is very simple -- an impoverished construction worker (the director, Chow) cannot afford toys for his son because he has spent all of the money he has for private school tuition, hoping that the boy will have an opportunity at a better life than he has. He finds a strange ball in a heap of trash and brings this to the boy, and the ball ends up becoming a magical alien creature. The boy, Dickie (actress Jiao Xu, impressively playing across gender lines), hopes that the creature which he names "CJ7" will be able to use his magic to help him with all his problems, and then becomes very angry with the "dog" when it can't deliver. Drama ensues when the father is involved in a horrific accident at work.I would have liked the movie better if "CJ7" wasn't such an overtly cartoonish creation. The movie might have been a bigger hit if it didn't look so much like Pikachu or whatever you call those pokemon things. It's just a bit too cutesy for most adults, though I assume kids like it. It reminded me a bit of "Gizmo" in the "Gremlins" movies.The heart of the story is a very good one. I think it was interesting that they allowed Dickie to be so bitter and so angry; most children's films are too patronizing to allow their characters to be real human beings. The actors portraying the kids all did a wonderful job, especially Xu and the kid playing the evil boy (credits list here is incomplete). Chow himself had a touch of grey hair in this one and a corresponding gravity on screen as he assumed the role of a mentor and parent.There are a lot of very funny scenes. I especially liked when Dickie was scared of "ghosts" and makes a silent scream because he doesn't want to be punished. Also the battle at the schoolyard was very funny and reminded me of Chow's other films. And that scary dog is pretty funny all by himself! Some of Chow's humor is pretty weird and might seem inappropriate to some people, but I personally prefer something intelligent and ironic to the type of sight jokes that occupy most comedy these days.The reason I don't think it is a really excellent film, but merely a good one, is that it was a bit too predictable and formulaic. The climax of the story doesn't really surprise or produce much sympathy.I would recommend to my fellow English-speaking posters that they go ahead and watch the film in Cantonese, as I compared both versions and the English dubbed version left out some of the meaning (for example, it does not have him telling Miss Yuen "there is no limit to bitterness" and it does not show him realizing that he was never promised anything by CJ7).