Not the greatest film of the year, but by several light-years the buzziest, this Hong Kong comedy has stormed the American box-office despite having English dubbed over Cantonese on the soundtrack and the word ‘soccer’ in the title. Not that you’d even notice the mouth-noise (and it is noise) discord. Shaolin Soccer is so raucous and thrillingly kinetic you just won’t have the time. Besides, the overblown shouting on the soundtrack compliments the whole super-kitsch, super-seventies kung-fu fighting vibe that’s going down. All this and that soccer-ball game too.
For reasons far too barmy to condense here, the movie kicks off with Stephen Chow’s martial arts scholar turned bum recruiting his (motley) fellow Shaolin alumni to play football in a superhuman, Bruce Lee-inspired fashion. Thanks to nifty special effects and grandiose comedic wirework, every atomic powered kick of the ball sees craters form, hurricanes rise, walls crumble and – this being a very Pink Panther affair – trousers fall down.
Just as well really, for the team’s coach, Golden Leg Fung (Ng), a crippled former footballing great, has a lot of old scores to settle. Inevitably, he leads his super skilled charges to a final involving Team Evil. (Eat your heart out Jamaica’s Violent Athletic Club.) Still more inevitably, Team Evil is coached by Golden Leg’s nemesis, the sublimely, ridiculously malevolent Hung. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Those American drugs are living up to their promise,” Hung cackles while watching his mutated team in action, before turning to his next nefarious deed.
Infinitely more entertaining than Escape To Victory (not difficult) and without doubt the most delightfully buffoonish movie since Jackie Chan stopped making Police Story films, Shaolin Soccer boasts a league-climbing turn from HK action-comedy megastar, Stephen Chow. Fans of football or Hong Kong movies - discerning individuals, as I like to call them - will likely be enraptured. So too, every man still in touch with his inner twelve year old. That would be pretty much all of them, then.