If CJ7 feels like the love child of Charles Dickens, Mao Zedong and Steven Spielberg, it’s because that’s exactly what this PG-rated, Chinese-made fantasy is.
It has the requisite sentimentality about the working poor and the innocent child in the big city that Dickens spun into sweeping melodramas two centuries ago. As China embraces its new capitalist image – a fact that informs every last frame of CJ7 – the disapproving ghost of Mao is embedded in the movie’s not-so-subtle critique of the new economy. And as for Spielberg, well, CJ7 is a budget-conscious repurposing of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. I say “repurposing,” since CJ7’s line-crossing between homage and larceny invites a debate that’s outside the purview of this piece.
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