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Perry Chen featured on San Diego Magazine July 09 issue

Published on: 7th July, 2009

Perry's Planet - Perry Chen featured on San Diego Magazine July 09

San Diego Magazine July 09 Cover

FRONT PAGES
Perry’s Planet

(page 28, San Diego Magazine, July 2009)
ASK PERRY CHEN what he wants to be when he grows up, and he softly and politely replies, “An explorer, a biologist, a scientist, an artist or a movie critic.”
At 9, Perry is already three of these. His artwork – exceptional birds and dragons, mostly – litters a work table in the family den and is collecting into a 2-foot stack on a coffee table. His exploring keeps him in constant motion. His discoveries pour out of him, in words and visuals. Minutes to Perry appear to represent pockets of discovery, opening one by one and beckoning him forward in his growing universe.
But in the community beyond his Torrey Hills front door, Perry, a charming, soft-spoken third-grader, is establishing a reputation as a movie critic. He started publishing his reviews of kids movies on his Web site, www.perryspreviews.com , early this year, and by April, area newspapers were picking them up, and television and radio were exhibiting interest. In April, after he reviewed Monsters vs. Aliens, Perry was officially certified by a movie publicity service and was provided schedules of critics’ advance screenings.
The audience for his reviews – which originate as pencil print in lined notebooks (he’s not into cursive yet) – is his peers. “I write my reviews to show everyone they can write their own reviews,” he says. His are straightforward, with splashes of depth (“Friendship is contagious and beyond species”) and cinematic flash (“The princess was agile and ran fast, like a ball of delight with legs!”). He rates the movies with starfish, five starfish meaning the movie was “Perrific.”
Perry’s mom, Zhu Shen – herself a noted figure in the life sciences industry here and in China – says her son’s review path began at a conference last fall with Joli Harris, his third-grade teacher at Torrey Hills School, who had recognized what she calls his “unique abilities and perspective.”
“We were hoping to provide him with a challenging and stimulating project that would interest him,” Harris says.
Perry likes the work, even though, he says, “I don’t get paid.” He has also begun drawing the storyboard characters for his own movie, The Sky Kingdom. He looks at the sheet of characters, and then in his vision, a new pocket opens. In five minutes, with scissors, stapler and a sheet of white paper, he has fashioned a dragon whose drooping isosceles wings rise and fall in Perry-powered flight, casting sensational shadows on the terrain in a new corner of Perry Chen’s universe.

–MICHAEL GRANT