Cheung Gong 7 hou (2008)

Director:

Stephen Chow

Writers:

Stephen Chow (writer)
Chi Keung Fung (writer)

Release Date:

30 January 2008 (China)

Genre:

Comedy | Sci-Fi

Plot:

A poor Chinese laborer learns important lessons after his son gets a strange new toy. |

Plot Keywords:

Kid | Man | Short Title | 3D | Reality Meets Animation

US Showtimes:

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Cast

Stephen Chow	...	Ti
Min Hun Fung	...	P. E. Teacher
Chi Chung Lam	...	The Boss
Shing-Cheung Lee	...	Mr. Cao
Jiao Xu	...	Dicky
Kitty Zhang Yuqi	...	Miss Yuen

Also Known As:

A Hope (Hong Kong: English title) (working title)
CJ7 (International: English title)
Chang Jiang 7 hao (Hong Kong: Mandarin title)
Long River 7 (Philippines: English title)

MPAA:

Rated PG for language, thematic material, some rude humor and brief smoking.

Runtime:

86 min

Country:

Hong Kong

Language:

Cantonese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Malaysia:U | Singapore:PG | USA:PG

Filming Locations:

Hong Kong, China

Company:

Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia

Trivia:

Xu Jiao, who plays Stephen Chow's son in this movie, is actually a girl.

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When the Dad is cutting the rotten part of the apple, he is cutting with the wrong side of the knife.

Movie Connections:

Features "Poketto monsutâ" (1997)

I almost didn't like it

There are so many set-ups to potentially unwatchable kid flicks within this film and yet the story somehow carves a unique path around them. Example- My first impression of the main character, the poor yet adorable little Dickie, was that of an adorable slum-born prodigy. Turns out, he's a spoiled brat and he sucks inschool. What's worse, his poor father is working his ass off so little Dickie can go to private school. Yet the story revolves around this cute little kid like he's the second coming of Macaulay Culkin. Hard to swallow if it weren't for the fact that he, like the alien, are cute as a button

There is something so great about taking an overworked Hollywood premise and handing it over to someone like Chow. It's as though he is making a tired mass-appealing movie, yet the scenes he chooses to tell the story make me think it's all tongue-in-cheek.

This damn toy alien, CJ7 is going to catch like Pokemon wildfire wherever this film is shown. Yet, within the film he's slapped, drowned, hacksawed, strangled, drilled, probed, flattened, choked, trapped in a plastic bag and stabbed with a banana- and that's just what the kids do to him!

In any event, I almost left when the cute alien arrived in the movie, but I'm glad I stayed. The movie is just too weird to pass up. If Shaolin Soccer is Chow's Bad News Bears, CJ7 is his ET. Both very entertaining films crammed into their genres like a fat-footed woman trying to wear pumps- with hilarious consequences.