The Scoop: 2001 PG-13, directed by Stephen Chow and starring Stephen Chow, Vicki Zhao, and Man Tat Ng

Tagline: Get Ready To Kick Some Grass

Summary Capsule: What do you get when you cross Dragonball Z with the World Cup of Soccer? Confused!

PoolMan’s rating: Coming soon to a theater near you: Ninja Baseball!

PoolMan’s review: Do you remember, back when it was still okay for cartoons to feature hilariously stereotyped black housewives, that sound effect that played whenever someone quickly shook their head back and forth when they were confused? That “abbadedabbadeabbadeabbadedabba” sound? Holy cow. There were THREE people in my place on the weekend making that very sound over and over and over again watching Shaolin Soccer. I was starting to get dizzy.

Shaolin Soccer is, like so many other oft-screamed for personal favourites, one of those movies that has just ALWAYS been requested on the Forums for us to review. Up until very recently, it has been very tough to find in North America. For the longest time, the only way to see this excellent flick was download off the net or a pirate DVD (and you know what that’ll do for the cult status of a movie!). However, there has finally been a mainstream DVD release that, while lacking in extras and glitter, at least finally manages to give the rest of us a chance to see this truly weird movie.

Try to imagine, if you will, a blend of the following three movies: The Matrix, Major League, and Moulin Rouge. Don’t worry, take your time. I understand it might take you a minute.

Got that all worked out? Great! Cause it’s exactly this blend, and it isn’t. Oooh… I’m getting all Zen-like, aren’t I? Really, the point here is that it’s very tough to describe the feel of this flick. It really does have the martial arts shenanigans of The Matrix (yep, right down to pseudo-bullet time, but not used in a way that might make you sick of it), it’s got the “loser team makes good” sports movie (I picked Major League because it’s fun, that’s all), and it’s got the ADD-inflicted editing, pace, and sometimes even visual style of Moulin Rouge. Sounds nutty, but it’s true.

Here’s the lowdown: Years ago, soccer superstar Golden Leg Fung is bribed to miss an easy place kick in a super-important soccer match, costing the team the game, and him the use of his leg (as the angry fans stream onto the field and beat the hell out of him). Flash forward years later, and Fung is a crippled man playing patsy to Hung, the man who bribed him. Hung’s all kind of powerful now, basically owning the national Supercup tournament with his drug-powered Team Evil. No seriously, the big bad team is called Team Evil. Shakespeare, eat your heart out.

So anyway, Fung one day meets young Sing, a poor cleaner who’s a former Shaolin monk, trained in crazy-ass martial arts and looking for a fresh new way to promote the Shaolin way. After discovering what kicking power the Shaolin have, Fung agrees to form a soccer team with himself as coach and Sing and his Shaolin brethren as the team. Throw in some filler players who carry wrenches in their shorts (keep in mind, this is still the good guy team!), and Shaolin Soccer is born. From there on in, it’s basically a rundown to the championship game against Team Evil, and really, if you can’t guess the outcome, then maybe you should be trying the 4-piece jigsaw puzzles for a challenge, hm?

The fun of the movie is watching the amazing soccer games. Once the brothers rediscover their forgotten mastery (each has a specialty, like Iron Head or Empty Hand), things become just a riot to watch. The matches see soccer balls kicked into the stratosphere, turned into balls of flame that plow through goalkeepers, nets, and unfortunate photographers. At this point, you might find yourself even reminded of DragonBall Z, but I would urge you not to let this deter you; it’s basically live action anime, complete with all the laughably hamfisted dialogue and posturing.

Where the movie ISN’T so fun is when Sing and Fung are trying to gather their team together. See, the Shaolin brothers are all former masters, but each has lost their way to the humdrum world. So of course, we get the view of their lives before Sing comes along to re-inspire them, but it’s a depressing view. Particularly the story of Iron Head, who cleans toilets at a karaoke bar and is regularly smashed over the head with glass bottles by his boss (gee, so glad I don’t know what that’s like, eh Justin?). It’s kind of sad, and kind of boring. Sure, it shows the character arcs nicely, but let’s be honest, we’re not here to see Shaolin Melodrama, are we? After the high energy of the first act, we’re left with a long middling chapter where you’re left little entertainment.

But stick it out! Because when they get to the run to the Supercup, things take a turn for the better. It’s just awesome fun to watch the ball literally tearing up the turf as it streaks along the pitch, or watch players leap fifty feet in the air to make a kick, or to watch massive demonic shadows gather in the force of a particularly awesome kick. All told, Shaolin Soccer isn’t deep, meaningful, or particularly thoughtful. But it is devilishly fun when it wants to be, and I’ll take the good over the bad any day. I’d say it’s earned every bit of its cult fanaticism. Bravo, crazy Chinese film makers!

Justin’s rating: The sheer joy of a 0-0 tie!

Justin’s review: Any movie that we label with a “classic” moniker has, by definition, to be something special. Perhaps it’s a guy with a lawnmower strapped to his chest, literally mowing down a zombie horde. Perhaps it’s one of the most famous endings of a movie wherein we find out what the devil’s greatest trick was.

And perhaps it’s a group of highly insane-about-Kung Fu people who decide to use their supernatural skills to play soccer, while on occasion breaking into a choreographed routine of “Celebration” in the middle of the street.

A classic movie isn’t just a film that has a few really good elements in it surrounded by mediocre effort, like a chili cheese burrito where the chili is wrapped in used cloth diapers. Although, you have to consider the absorbency factor there. No, a classic is a classic all the way through: highly entertaining, highly original, and leaving us wanting more… and more. I’m prepared to usher in Shaolin Soccer to my limited repertoire of classics, and I’m not hesitant to do so.

This is simply a movie made on the wonkers. The whole Kung Fu-melded-with-soccer idea is enough to sell me on watching it, but the makers of Shaolin Soccer didn’t stop there. Any way they could, and perhaps as the product of a night of Truth or Dares, the filmmakers pumped in gallons of bizarre humor and hinky situations to fill this film up to the bursting point. Sometimes foreign films are handicapped when it comes to understanding subtle cultural humor, but pretty much everyone can understand why it’s really funny for both opposing soccer teams to be harassing and smacking up the referee behind his back. Or when a guy who really likes his raw eggs goes to any length to get them back, even if they’re in someone else’s mouth.

As a misfit team of losers — equipped only with their childhood knowledge of mystical Kung Fu — band together to try their feet at soccer, the Shaolin buddies are a hysterical group that are short on distinct characterization (apart from short introductions) but are long on visual pleasure. For me, soccer isn’t thrilling, and when I say that, I mean that if today a magical vacuum suddenly popped up all over earth and sucked up every last soccer ball, soccer field, soccer team, and soccer player into the voids of space (where bumblebees frolic happily among warp nacelles), I’d be sorta okay with it. So for this movie to make soccer exciting again, even if it took numerous special effects and guys getting their clothes blown off with the sheer force of incoming balls, it’s an astounding feat. Of feet.

I also can’t get over just how weird, wonderfully delightfully weird, this movie could be. Sure, we’d love an explanation why a soccer team of gorgeous girls are all sporting facial hair, or why a key goalie stops in the middle of an important game to make a cell phone call to his mistress, or how a girl with severe acne suddenly gets rid of it and shaves her head bald… but I’m okay not knowing, as long as it’s all there, preserved on video for future generations to laugh over.

Shaolin Soccer is an incredibly fun movie, fully deserving of any accolades — including “classic” or “cult” or “bacon ranch dressing” — you wish to bestow on it. And considering that you haven’t been bestowing much lately, or flossing for that matter, I think you need to get off your lazy kiester and get to it, buddy!

Sue’s rating: You know, I can’t listen to the song Kung Fu Fighting without thinking of that Geico Insurance commercial. Nothing says automotive protection and security like a small singing lizard.

Sue’s review: In a little less than one month, I have (as Justin so often wheedles — I mean mandates) gone where I’ve never gone before. No, not Cancun. I should be so lucky. I mean I’ve watched no less than three movies that under ordinary circumstances might have eluded me forever. In the case of Dust, I wish it had. Donnie Darko, on the other hand, was more fun than a barrel of demonic bunnies – and I mean that in a very good way. And now here’s Shaolin Soccer.

This is not the sort of movie that you can easily wrap your brain around, and it’s probably for the best if you don’t even try. I think it’s been mentioned in similar terms by my peers, but Shaolin Soccer appears to be the confused but sort of cute love child of Baz Luhrman, Bruce Lee and… the Gipper. Granted, that’s rather an unlikely ménage à trois, but watch it and try to tell me I’m wrong.

Enjoyable as it was, in a purely so-this-is-what-it’d-be-like-if-I’d-developed-a-drug-habit-in-my-teens way, it’s not a perfect movie by a long stretch. For instance, the set up has the flow of molasses and the obligatory romantic angle was handled with the sensitivity of a two hundred pound gorilla ripping the legs off an encroaching hyena. Don’t let that dissuade you though. For sheer zany weirdness, you’d have to smack a lot of village idiots with an awful lot of herrings to get anything comparable to this.

The actual soccer games (“football”, for the majority of the universe) make up the best parts of the film. There’s never any real strategy going on of course, but you don’t need strategy when you’re a kung-fu master with a kick like a nuclear mule. And if you’re more into violence than sports, just try to imagine what happens when some poor schmuck tries to block a soccer ball moving at Mach 3. Man, that has to sting!

Anyway, for those who like soccer playing, biscuit making, shoe repair, kung fu spirituality and dancing in the streets, I think we’ve got ourselves a winner!

Intermission!

• Wow… that is some acne on Mui! Of course, she’s a love interest, so you just know it won’t stick around.
• The shooters in the big games are rarely challenged. There’s long stretches where they just got dozens of shots on the goalkeepers while everyone else just stands around looking concerned.
• The incredible morph between the Shaolin temple and the business district.
• I think that may be the lightest trophy in history.
• The “male” players who are obviously cute women with moustaches.
• Um, Mui? I don’t think eyeshadow is supposed to go all the way down your nose.
• Ah… Jurassic Park water cup makes a cameo!
• How much Mighty Steel Leg and (especially) Empty Hand look like Bruce Lee?
• Those “American drugs” must really be something!
• The Team Evil guys don’t talk much, do they?
• Buttcheek action on the Evil goaltender as his clothes are burnt off! Ah!
• Vicki Zhao (playing Mui) really went through the makeup wringer on this movie. Not only is she acne-bound for the first half, but at the end, she’s made up to look as though she shaved her head. A very effective makeup job… it’s just a skullcap, but looks astounding (we were debating whether she really shaved her head), it took 8 hours daily to apply.
• In some US cuts of the movie, “Kung Fu Fighting” is played over the end credits, replacing the original soundtrack.
• Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits? Well, at least wait until they begin… there’s some decent outtakes.

If you liked this movie, try these:

• Kung Pow: Enter The Fist
• The Matrix
• Major League