I started off the year talking about how there are so many great movies I’d like to see, it’s stupid to waste time watching bad movies… see also “The Finding Forrester Effect“. And here I am watching two bad ones in a row (this and Doomsday). Sure both viewing decisions were vaguely auteur-based since I’ve liked work by these directors before, but wasn’t Finding Forrester itself directed by a renowned film auteur? Oh well, there is no discovery without risk.

Chow plays a poor, uneducated, overworked, widowed single father. On top of that, his son is bullied at school, failing his classes, and can’t play sports because his shoes are falling apart. On top of THAT, Chow falls off a building at his construction job and dies. and his son cries and cries, and so does his nice teacher, and so do the only other people in the movie theater besides myself.

On the other hand, there are poop jokes and dream sequences, and the kid has a cute flubbery alien that his dad found at the dump.

Back on the first hand, the alien is beaten and squished and drowned and exploited and abandoned. Finally it kills (?) itself to resurrect Chow, god only knows why.

Movie alternates between bland and cruel. When it’s not making one of its main characters suffer, it’s not doing anything particularly exciting or interesting either. The good parts (most of them involving two extremely oversized middle-schoolers) are few, and not good enough to make this a movie worth watching.

It’s rare that we get a foreign film here in Atlanta less than two months after its opening date in its home country. I guess this didn’t play the festival circuit and was maybe pre-sold for US distribution after the 1-2 punch of Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle. Anyway, it closed in a week and we’ll hopefully never hear from it again. Better luck next time in Kung Fu Hustle 2…