Secret of the magic gourd

The Disney company joined up with a Hong Kong animation company (Centro) and a China film group to create a CGI/animation studio producing films for the PRC. First off the SFX artists' assembly lines, in 2007 after two years' work, was The Secret of the Magic Gourd.

Designed for children rather than adults, and obliged to present government-approved images of ethical behaviour (and official disbelief in supernatural agents of happiness), it tells the tale of a work-shy lad who learns that a magic gourd brings more troubles than delights when it tries to do its master's bidding. It's a Chinese children's story with various Western equivalents: be careful what you wish for.

Somewhere in a Chinese city (Hangzhou locations), a lazy primary schoolboy who's slightly plump and comparatively big-eyed has handsome well-off middle-class parents, a cute sister and a granny and they all live in a pretty big house. The boy likes fishing, which is an ideal sport for lazy souls, wishes life could be easier, and catches a magic gourd. It's small and chatty, fits in his pocket, and is a below-par CGI animation with a pair of beady eyes and an emotional mouth.

This genie (called Bailey in the movie's dubbed English version) interprets the new master's wishes literally. The boy wants to capture a chess piece, so it helps him swallow them all; he likes a toy shop's products, so they all fly and march to his home. He needs help in a math text, so it lifts all the characters off a class-mate's paper, including her name, which gives him another black mark in the eyes of his pretty wise teacher (Hong Kong's Gigi Leung wasted). No one knows the secret of the grumpy boy's failed tricks, but his teacher and audience know that he must and will learn to study hard and do his own thing, which is winning the school's relay swimming race and thereby gaining self-confidence and Bailey's disappearance.

Standard Disney family fare translated into a modern Chinese context, the story has little to amuse adults (and a few typical bogus bloopers by Bailey in a DVD extra). Bailey remains too small a character physically and figuratively in the live-action movie, and his only animated sidekick is a little frog who croaks. The CGI effects are occasionally cute, but the movie over-focuses on the boy and his pals, to no dramatic effect.

This movie felt like a trial run, a Disney taster meant to reassure mainland censors and educators. Sales returns may have justified the dubbed version for the English-speaking DVD market; Disney's Buena Vista probably didn't even try to distribute it to cinemas.