...“Shaolin Soccer” is as bad as the movie (“Dodgeball”) that it inspired...
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What do you get when you take a bunch of down-on-their luck guys, throw them into an athletic tournament, and have a girl save the guys´ butts? Why, "Shaolin Soccer" and "Dodgeball", of course! In 2001´s "Shaolin Soccer", Sing (Stephen Chow), a former Shaolin monk trained in the Shaolin-style of kung fu, decides to compete in a series of soccer games so that he and his friends will no longer be hungry and out of money ever again. Sing and Co. do well until the final game against "Team Evil", during which a girl has to join the protagonists in order for the movie to have a happy ending. Alas, "Shaolin Soccer" is as bad as the movie ("Dodgeball") that it inspired, so there´s very little reason for you to see it.
First of all, you may have heard about the "spectacular" kung-fu-meets-soccer moves. Let me ask you--what is so spectacular about watching computer-generated fireballs, windstorms, improbable kicks, etc.? Things are always more visceral when you know that someone did something for real. Also, I haven´t seen computer graphics done this poorly in a long, long time.
The movie´s first half is slow, confusing, and aimless. For no reason, characters break into song and dance at a local snack shop. Exposition about some characters´ backgrounds is handled poorly and choppily. The "romance" between Sing and Mui (Vicki Zhao), an oft-berated cook, made me open my mouth in disbelief--disbelief at how forced and idiotic it was.
Like "Dodgeball", the best scenes in "Shaolin Soccer" involve the games themselves. However, it gets numbing watching Stephen Chow do fly kick after fly kick, and it gets numbing watching what are essentially "stupid human tricks" that have nothing to do with soccer or kung fu at all. There are a couple of visual allusions to other movies (including "Saving Private Ryan", Bruce Lee in "Game of Death", and John Woo slo-mo in several movies) that are more fun and interesting to watch than those endless matches during the movie´s second half.
Perhaps the movie´s most important aspect involves the (badly-handled) relationship between Sing and Mui. Mui is played by an actress from mainland China. Therefore, Mui speaks Mandarin, and the Cantonese-speaking Sing has to speak Mandarin in order to be able to woo her. This reflects the growing tide of people from mainland China flooding into Hong Kong following the return of Hong Kong to the Chinese after more than a century of British colonial rule. This also reflects the need for the Cantonese-speaking population of Hong Kong to deal with being able to communicate with their new compatriots.
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[release]12384[/release]