CJ7 (2008)

Stephen Chow's CJ7 arrives as a curious artifact from 2008, a science fiction comedy in which a destitute construction worker named Ti scavenges a green orb from a junkyard and hands it to his son as a toy. The orb becomes a dog-shaped alien with restorative powers and a talent for defecating on command. Chow, in his final screen performance before retreating behind the camera, plays the father with a weary dignity, and the film's pleasures are small, handmade, and oddly sincere.

The engine of the plot is money, or the lack of it. Ti cannot afford the popular robotic toy his son demands, cannot keep the boy in decent clothes, and works dangerous heights to cover private school fees. That economic pressure runs through every scene, and it amounts to a soft critique of the arrangement that keeps the poor scrambling. It is a critique delivered through slapstick, however, and never through a podium. The film has no interest in lecturing its audience about the system. It simply shows a man falling from a scaffold and lets a magic dog fix it.

What the film does not contain is equally instructive. There is no gender argument, no identity programming, no environmental sermon, no attempt to reinterpret history. The cultural texture is specific and unremarked, a working-class Chinese family rendered without editorializing. Two decades on, CJ7 reads as a modest, bittersweet comedy about a father, a son, and a very strange pet. Its social awareness is real but quiet, which in the current climate feels almost like a novelty.