Starring Xu Jiao and Stephen Chow. In Mandarin with English subtitles. Rated PG. Opens Friday, March 14, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

People expecting Disney cuteness from CJ7, an effects-laden kid flick from Hong Kong spectacle maker Stephen Chow, are in for some surprises. There is some cloying sentimentality here, but western audiences are not used to seeing lovable ETs beaten to a pulp, nor do they expect toilet jokes to come with actual shit.

There are some additional subtextual features in the latest from the man behind Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle, but it’s hard to know what to make of the fact that a girl, newcomer Xu Jiao, stars as a much-ridiculed boy called Dicky, no less. Said lad lives with his father (the shaggily handsome director), a widower and impoverished labourer who is starving so Dicky can attend a ritzy private school—perhaps not wise when your kid goes there in mouldy sneakers left at the dump. (The squash-the-cockroach game they play at dinnertime is likewise inspiring.)

The local garbage heap is also where the dad finds his son’s new toy: a glowing green ball dropped from a pith helmet–shaped UFO. The ball soon disgorges a Furby-style critter with a fuzzy face and a body of impossibly flexible plastic. Like the Shmoo and other fantasy animals before him, this thing practically jumps into the nearest frying pan in order to serve human needs.

One of the film’s funniest segments compares Dicky’s notion of what this magical visitor, called CJ7, should do for him versus what it can actually produce (see first paragraph for that). This leads to the cruellest parts of a movie that humiliates authority figures—except for the pretty ones—even as it touts the virtues of striving for success in only-child China.