Review of Shaolin Soccer (2001) by Sean L — 27 Nov 2018

Years removed from his heyday, a disgraced former soccer star recruits a squad of mystically powerful kung fu masters to bend the rules and dominate the game in his stead. Or, perhaps, it's the masters who have recruited him to lend their dispirited old crew a unified sense of direction. Either way, the fruits of their partnership are awfully juicy.

Starring Stephen Chow, whose zany, effects-reliant fighting style would later make Kung Fu Hustle such an unexpected delight, it's a film that insists you flip the switch on your brain for a while and just enjoy the inanity of the moment. The action scenes make no effort to hide the wires or mask the CG, which looks silly but also erases any concern about anchoring them to reality. Freed from those constraints, the sky's the limit for this creative production. It takes every opportunity to one-up previous shots with a flair for the eccentric, culminating in a recklessly destructive, cartoon-violent final match against an equally powerful outfit of genetically engineered soccer stars.

Whenever it tries to go straight and actually focus on storytelling, Shaolin Soccer is a total disaster. Every stereotype about a hurried, inept overseas production rolled into one. Fortunately, we don't wait long between slices of the real sizzle - those absurdly silly effect shots - and the film's wacky, genuine sense of humor helps to balance out the rest. Stupid, stupid fun.