Made in China

87 minutes | Rated NR

A prize winner at the Chicago and South by Southwest film festivals, this slight comedy celebrates the healing power of novelty items—the joy buzzer, the giant pencil, the Pet Rock, the Slinky. An aspiring young entrepreneur journeys to Shanghai, looking for a cheap factory to manufacture his own gimmicky invention, and entrusts his funds to a British businessman who promptly rips him off. Writer-director Judith Krant seems not to recognize the irony in someone who admires the Pet Rock losing all his money, and when the hero's novelty item is finally revealed in the movie's closing minutes it turns out to be not as clever as all that. The movie is something of a novelty item itself—amusing, pointless, and disposable. By J.R. Jones