I'm a big fan of Stephen Chow, his absurdist comedies have always ranked high on my favorites when it comes to movies, so when he directed a little family movie in between his big budget ones, I thought it might be a good little intro for my kids. So I popped in CJ7, and then slowly my expectations began to peel away little by little. So, one of the things I forget sometimes is the cultural differences between Eastern and Western movies. As nonsensical as his movies are, Chow tends to infuse a lot of spiky and mean humor, bordering on cruelty. At the same time, it's not that it's just mean to be mean, but rather it's stuff we don't see in Western movies. Basically, the movie is about a destitute father and son, the father being a rather clueless construction worker and the son being picked on especially since his father enrolls him in a private school full of snobby rich kids. In a couple scenes, the cute little alien is being chased and stomped on by kids, even by the protagonist of the story. While this is jarring for most of us, like Zoe, it's pretty much what kids would do. So Zoe is baring the whole movie except when the little alien is being squished and twisted and abused - she would vocally shout, "That's not nice!" and get a little worked up. She was definitely making me a little worried because the movie does take it a notch further then what we're used to as Disney-fed audiences.
Spoilers now, so watch out.
Anyway, the father falls off a building at work. That was a little traumatic as it is. But the alien, possessing regenerative powers, revive him but ends up draining his own life whereby a little bead falls out of his head, and he shrivels up and becomes a stuffed animal. At this point, Zoe is just sobbing and I'm feeling like I just took a sledgehammer to her heart by showing her this movie. The movie ends a little ambiguously, but is enough for me to tell her that everything turned up alright. But still. We had to watch a couple episodes of Curious George and have some fruit snacks just to take her mind off the movie, and just when I was putting her to bed, she was hopping in excitement and she hit her hit on the second tier of the bunk bed. Crying recommenced.
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Not doing a whole lot today, just some space and data management. I cleaned up the desk a little and labeled some of the many USB cables I have laying around. I can't even tell half the time what the hell I'm plugging in anymore. So I got a load of that junk sorted out. Stayed home pretty much all day. Feeling drained today, coming down with something that dehydrates me a little.
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