Shaolin Soccer Movie Review:


Mel Brooks. Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker. Monty Python. Stephen Chow? Movie spoofing is an art that can boast of several creative forces from the past, but apparently not many in the present. The closest thing Americans can look for these days is the “Scary Movie” series, a dopey set of flicks containing little ingenuity and plenty of bad comedy timing. It might be better for us to look across the sea to Hong Kong, where spoofmeister Stephen Chow has been practicing his trade for the better part of the last decade.

“Shaolin Soccer” will be the first of his movies to be given a theatrical run on American shores, and it's not only the best film for potential fans in the West to start with, it's arguably Chow's best movie. The actor/writer/director built up his reputation in Asia as a zany, nonsensical comedy provider. With “Shaolin Soccer,” he scored his biggest commercial and critical hit, and it isn't hard to see why. Chow's earlier movies, starting with the 1994 James Bond parody “From Beijing with Love” and moving on through efforts like 1999's “King of Comedy,” are quite loose-ended. Their comedic highlights are usually riotous, but they have to fight through uneven pacing, liberal (to put it mildly) plotting developments, and a predilection for extreme physical violence. In “Shaolin Soccer,” all of these things are toned down.

The result is a movie with a tighter story, more polished humor, and a more consistent comedic flow, none of which detracts from its overall zaniness. By using a standard sports-misfits-beat-the-odds plot and sticking to it, Chow can focus on the outrageousness without going too far out of bounds. His better trademarks remain intact, from his various movie references to his skill at making kung-fu look over-the-top silly, while his weaker tendencies are subdued -- those spots of excessive violence, for instance, common to a Hong Kong audience but perhaps jarring elsewhere, are still there, but they're a little more justified this time as a set up for payback. Meanwhile, his penchant for bathroom humor is kept wisely in check; gross-outs are present but relatively tempered.

I realize writing all this may be going a long way to give praise to what is effectively one of the best knee-jerk laugh-out-loud crack-ups I've seen in a long time. Chow knows the secrets of the spoof genre -- create a world which is totally normal to its very serious inhabitants, but is bursting with absurdity to outside viewers. For “Shaolin Soccer,” the crux of the comedy comes from a whimsical theory: awesome martial arts skills look funny when applied to situations outside of fighting (and especially in a corny sports story, complete with a romantic subplot). Chow seems to be asking, if we can believe in a universe where people could possess these crazy physical skills, why wouldn't those people use those skills for the purposes of everyday life?

“Shaolin Soccer” has the added benefit of possessing a madcap array of comedic action sequences, all playfully dressed up in faux-“Matrix” slo-mo rotating camera special effects, to help win over western audiences. The placement of these action scenes, most of them in the context of physics-defying soccer matches, is a deft display of pacing, with each one more hilariously explosive than the last, until the climax ups the ante so high that keeping normal expectations becomes futile.

Chow makes the best use of his persona here -- he's scruffy, cool, likeable, affable, and unassuming. He never resorts to smart-aleckiness and delivers a sympathetic, unironic performance that reflects the work of the best physical comedians of the past. While his previous movies were funny, “Shaolin Soccer” is the work that raises his oeuvre to a higher plane. Should he be listed among the comedy greats I mentioned at the beginning? This movie makes the strongest case for it.

Jeffrey Chen

Disgraced Soccer star Golden Leg (Tat Ng) sees a chance to get back at his old team when he discovers a young man called Sing (Chow) who is skilled in the ancient Shaolin martial arts and wants to use sports as a way of introducing the masses to the discipline. Golden Leg takes it on himself to be his coach and together they bring in Sing’s brothers to form a team. The combination of Shaolin martial arts and soccer makes them almost invincible, that is until they come up against Evil Team, who use black magic to enhance their skills.

The most popular sport in the world has never really hit the cinematic heights of other movies in the genre but Shaolin Soccer does its best to change all that.

With only “Escape to Victory” reaching the classic status amongst football fans, the Soccer movie is wide open for someone else to have a crack at it. Writer/Director Stephen Chow does just that and has real fun doing it. Combining the beautiful game with martial arts, Chow and his cast and crew create one of the most fun sports movies ever made.

Never taking itself seriously in the slightest, Shaolin Soccer sets its stall out early as a comedy sports movie that just happens to have some over the top martial arts in it as well. This is a movie of two halves. In the first half we get stuck into the comedy filled soccer training. Here we get to see our heroes trying to combine their Shaolin skills with the basics of football, with hysterical results. The second half sees the team enter the tournament and this is when the real fun begins.

Combining football, martial arts and special effects to produce a really outrageous spectacle, the tournament is the highlight of the movie. Here we see the team bulldoze their way through the other competitors in spectacular fashion. For a low budget foreign picture the visual effects are extremely good. While some of them are very obvious, they work with the charm of the movie. Now the ball is a weapon at the feet of a Shaolin master and he/she can manipulate it anyway they like. So we know have astonishing flying kicks, gravity defying headers and shots that literally burn the back of the net but that is not all when Evil Team starts bringing black magic into the equation. Now the gloves are off and our heroes will have to show great bouncebackability if they are ever going to win the game.

The outrageous plot and mad football would be nothing without some great performances from the cast. As well as writing and directing the film, Stephen Chow also stars as Sing, the Shaolin master with a gift for kicking the ball extremely hard. As the hero of the piece it is up to him to unite the team and his brothers to gain victory over Evil Team. He shows a real gift for comedy and the more physical side of the role, much in the same vein as Jackie Chan. Man Tat Ng is also good as former soccer legend Golden Leg. This is a man who had everything taken away from him and forced to live in the shadow of his former teammate and now manager of Evil Team.

The rest of the cast are also good. Vicki Zhao is Sing’s love interest and a dumpling cook with control skills that would put Ronaldinho to shame. Yut Fei Wong, Kwok Kuen Chan, Lam Chi Chung and Chi-Sing Lam are also good as Sing’s gifted but slightly stupid brothers who turn their unique Shaolin skills in real footballing gifts.

At the end of the day Shaolin Soccer sets its stall out very early by setting itself up as a comedic sports movie that never takes itself seriously. With over the top action sequences and classic confrontations, the movie is a riot for all fans of the beautiful game and will have them chanting at the screen as their heroes head towards goal. Football is a funny old game but you have never seen it like this before.

Star Rating = * * *

Jamie Kelwick

Site Contents Copyright© The Z Review, unless used with permission.This site has no intention to infringe on the rights of the film owners of Shaolin Soccer and intellectual copyright holders of the movies mentioned herein & hold copyright over the movie, characters, merchandise & storyline.