CJ7

主演: 周星驰, 徐娇, 张雨绮, 林子聪
导演: 周星驰
类型: 喜剧 / 科幻


Watching the movie reminds myself of my schooling days in an all-girls convent school. Coming from a lower middle income family, I could fully empathise with the child’s mentality of not having enough, not being able to fit in to his school and being outcast by fellow classmates because you do not have the right (or expensive) toys/gadgets that rich kids always have.

In fact, I remember that many of my classmates were chauffered to school in cars by their parents who probably worked in air conditioned offices, wearing long sleeve collar shirts, unlike my father who is probably working a sweat in the market and seriously in need of sleep having to wake up in the wee hours of the morning for work.

The story goes that a very poor father, acted by Stephen Chow, understanding the importance of education in getting out of the vicious poverty circle, enrolled his son into a rich-kid school. The father had to work extremely hard, eat simply, borrow money from his employer, pick up scraps so that he will be able to send his only son to a good school. His son goes to school in old clothes and shoes, wearing torn schools his father found in rubbish dumps.

The child is constantly made the butt of the joke for not being properly attired for Physical Education lessons, for not having the right ambition, for not having the most expensive and most trendy toy in the market. I remembered growing up without Barbie dolls and wishing I had at least one. So that I can play make up and dress up to my doll – the epitome of beauty. I even had this classmate who purportedly had an entire collection of Barbie dolls from Mattel! Imagine having an entire cupboard full of the entire Barbie dolls as well as Barbie’s long-time boyfriend, Ken, as part of the Barbie doll collection!

And then there were the other classmates whose parents could afford the entire series of Enid Blyton, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and were even members of the Bookworm Club. I so much wanted to own an entire bookshelf of the Enid Blyton series, like my cousin did and know the names for all of the characters in Noddyland. But I didn’t.

However, I did remember my father investing in a collection of encyclopedias that cost a couple of thousands of dollars. That was and still is a huge sum of money for someone like my father. But the irony was that even though I had the privilege of having this very informative collection, I didn’t treasure it because none of my classmates had it and I didn’t think that it’s such a big deal. Even till today, more than 20 years later, the collection still sits with a layer of dust in our house.

Anyway, the rich do get a head-start in life and that’s the fact of life. The rest, is really up to ourselves. For the son in CJ7, he was lucky enough to stumble upon an alien dog which provided him with lots of happiness and gave him something to look forward to school everyday. There are several touching moments in the film which resonated with me very much.

One scene was the one when the son became so mesmerized with the latest toy in the market, an intelligent toy dog called CJ1 and he wanted to own it very badly, no doubt due to peer pressure. Despite his father’s coaxing for him to leave because he simply did not have the money to pay for such a luxury item, the son was so besotted with the toy that he absolutely had to have it. His refusal to leave the shopping mall and his dad’s exasperation that his usually obedient son suddenly appears to be so out of hand were things that I myself went through as well.

In fact, bits about the film seemed to have come out of my personal life story. My classmates turned up in track shoes and swanky patent heeled schools while I wore old shoes made of cloth, ashamed of how they looked at me, ashamed of its cheapness and envious of their great looking shoes, were part and parcel of my schooling days. Even my school uniform looked very worn as they were usually hand-me-downs from my elder sister. Stationery like the pencil case, the pencils, the eraser and the ruler used are all status indication, if you have not noticed. Sigh, the perils of sending your child to schools where the majority of the school mates were from well-to-do families.

Stephen Chow veers away from his classic slapstick and attempts to induce the tear ducts to action with this decent film where he was more of a supporting actor rather than the lead. The son in the film is actually a female who dressed up like a male. Trust Stephen Chow to come up with such an ingenious idea where all the male student characters in the movie has to act as females and vice versa. You can imagine the fun at the set!

This movie may not be slapstick funny as well Stephen Chow’s usual works, but it’s a decent piece of social commentary. What should get your attention will be the son, 徐娇’s excellent acting chops which will get you hooting for him, I mean, her.