Hong Kong wild man Stephen Chow (Shaolin Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle) doesn’t quite deliver the Spielbergian children’s fantasy he intends, though even with its flaws this comedy is more interesting kids’ fare than most sanitized studio releases. A young boy (actually a girl, Jiao Xu) and his construction worker father (Chow) live in Chaplinesque poverty, stomping roaches on the wallpaper for fun. After the boy throws a fit for a new robotic toy he’s seen at school, the father finds him a pod left behind by a spaceship, but it turns out to be a gooey green quadriped with a furry white Pekinese face and magical powers. Much CGI mischief ensues, yet the sentimental father-son story mixes uneasily with Chow’s characteristic snottiness (like the two obese schoolkids, one a girl and the other a boy, who get thundering sound effects when they walk). In Mandarin with subtitles. PG, 86 min.
