Ng Man Tat plays Golden Leg Fung, once the greatest soccer player in all of Hong Kong. Fung has fallen upon hard times however, for after taking a bribe presented to him by his team mate Hung, he deliberately missed a vital penalty kick and cost his team an important game, which led to a riot on the pitch and Fung’s Golden Leg was horribly smashed, destroying his career. Fung is now a low level employee of Hung, who is now the manager of the most successful team in the East, cryptically named Evil Team. All the humiliation that Hung suffered at the hands of his superior team mate when they were young are paid back as Fung is repeatedly shamed at the hands of the cruel and bitter football mogul. While walking through a busy business district, Fung meets a young former Shaolin student who’s down on his luck. Sing (Stephen Chow) he wishes to promote his kung fu teachings and is constantly trying to find ways to apply them practically. He believes that if everybody knew kung fu, the world would become a better place, however he cannot convince anybody and feels he just needs some way to promote kung fu to the mainstream and make people take notice. Sing is currently working for peanuts collecting garbage for recycling, and his old Shaolin brothers have all gone their separate ways. Sing worked for years to perfect his Shaolin Mighty Steel Leg, and after Fung witnesses Sing defend himself against a group of thugs using only a football and his incredible kicking power, he is convinced that Sing could help him start a great football team, and Sing has his way to bring kung fu to mainstream attention.

Sing goes about trying to recruit his five Shaolin brothers to the cause, so they might enter the National Soccer Tournament. Each of Sing’s brothers possess different Shaolin techniques that would make them beneficial in different areas of the soccer field. One has the Iron Head technique, another has Empty Hand, another Iron Shirt, and then there’s Weight Vest, and the last brother has the Hooking Leg technique. Sing also meets and befriends Mui, a very cute young lady who uses Tai Chi to make dough for steamed bread, unfortunately she has ugly blisters and scars on her face and is very shy, though Sing becomes the target of her affections after he’s nice to her. After some convincing, and realising that their lives are going nowhere after they left their Shaolin days behind, the brothers all join Sing and Fung to start training for the soccer tournament. Fung tries to teach them the soccer skills they need to play, and Sing makes great progress in controlling the amazing power of his Mighty Steel Leg, though its not until they have a tryout match with the dirtiest local team that Sing’s brothers finally find their powers reawaken and they are ready to enter the National Soccer Tournament, and ultimately take on Hung and his scarily powerful Evil Team.

Shaolin Soccer has a lot in its favour, a good cast, Hong Kong’s top comedy filmmaker at the helm, and tons of really cool CGI. Is it well-made? Yes. Is it a clever parody? Yes. But is it funny? Side-splittingly hilarious? I can’t really say it is. Stephen Chow is clearly a very clever and talented guy, has many very original and neat ideas, and really knows how to make movies. Shaolin Soccer is very well shot, stylish, and a good and fun slice of unique Hong Kong cinema which goes right against the recent attempts by movie makers of the same country to make films like their Hollywood counterparts. The special effects are so utterly over the top you can’t help but chuckle as Chow happily mocks The Matrix and CGI-heavy films from Hong Kong itself such as Andrew Lau’s The Stormriders and A Man Called Hero, and by and large the effects are pretty good. There are some good comic moments too such as Sing and one of his brothers dressing as singing Shaolin monks and performing to absolute silence in a bar of violent punters, or the goal keeper’s likeness to Bruce Lee being exploited with him doing impressions of him and his team kit resembling the famous yellow jump-suit from Game of Death. It also features one of the best opening title sequence ever, featuring the excellent main theme and some extremely entertaining visuals, it almost has a Once Upon a Time in China feel to it.

However I really tried to love Shaolin Soccer, I watched it more than once after being told I’d ‘get it’ the second time, but I guess I still don’t truly ‘get it’, if ‘getting it’ means that I was meant to be in hysterics for much of its duration. Shaolin Soccer just didn’t strike me as that funny, not helped at all by the sudden flashes of over-wrought melodrama which do more to harm the tone of the film and give the impression that perhaps Chow wasn’t sure whether to go into a full-on parody or not, which perhaps he should have done. Characterisation is minimal as everybody is pretty one-dimensional, even Chow’s own character just seems to shout through most of the movie and is a slave to the visual effects that are the film’s focus, and the one subplot that brought some depth to the film is totally and utterly abandoned at the end which frustrated me no end. Another thing that irks is the complete lack of any understanding of the actual game of football (or soccer to those who don’t know any better). If you want to see a football movie you’d probably be better off watching Escape to Victory where Sylvester Stallone showed more understanding of the game than this did, in fact it feels like they learned all they knew from a video game. The fact that its called Shaolin Soccer is unimportant, it could have been Shaolin Baseball, Shaolin Hockey, Shaolin Curling - the film would have been pretty much identical as there is little development beyond the ball and there being a goal at either end of the field. Its all about the visuals, and after films like The Stormriders and The Avenging Fist it seems very strange that a film that has a very similar structure, little characterisation or plot and lots of CGI, should be praised so highly just because it doesn’t take itself as seriously. Nope, I guess I don’t ‘get it’.

While there are moments of humour early on that show Chow’s really good eye for visual gags, later scenes just don’t have that same jovial spirit. Its still worth seeing and perhaps Canto-humour just isn’t my thing, and I’m certainly in the minority in not finding this film hilarious. While I can certainly appreciate the visual flair and style that has gone into the film, and its one of the most original films to come out of Hong Kong for a good while now, but like so many things is not going to be entirely to everybody’s taste.