Back of the net! (Shaolin Soccer (DVD))

Member Name: Wolfzilla

Product:	Shaolin Soccer (DVD)
Date:	12/06/08 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Football+Martial Arts+Humour = Greatness

Disadvantages: This didn't hit UK cinemas

Shaolin Soccer had built itself quite a reputation and following before it had even seen any form of official release outside of Asia, with it's unique blend of comedy,martial arts and sport attracting fans, and intoxicating almost everyone who viewed it via some form of bootleg or import DVD. It's finally recieved a UK DVD release, and given that it combines two of my favourite interests: football and Martial Arts movies, I naturally didn't hold back from splashing out the full £16.99 RRP.

Actually made way back in 2001, before football hysteria hit Asia with the 2002 World Cup, as I say, the movie has only recently made the trip from it's native continent and into the DVD players of the interested worldwide.

Opening in the past, where a player dubbed 'Golden Leg'(Man Tat Ng) deliberately misses a penalty in exchange for cash. However, he gets more than he bargained for, when a rioting crowd breaks his leg and forever cripples him. This has all been orchestrated by his rival Hung(Patrick Tse), who now manages and owns 'Team Evil', who have been Champions of the China Supercup for the last few years, with Golden Leg working as a janitor. After he expresses his interest in coaching a team, Hung sacks him, and he goes off home, but not before bumping into a down on his luck Shaolin Monk, famed for his 'Iron Leg'(Stephen Chow), who is constantly looking for ways to expand people's interest in Kung Fu.

After some failed attempts to turn it into a musical form with his brother 'Iron Head'(Yut Fei Wong), Iron Leg witnesses a girl named Mui(Vicki Zhao) making cakes with Tai Chi. Despite her bad skin condition, he is immediately smitten, but she is shy and doesn't offer him any encouragement.

Golden Leg stumbles upon Iron Leg, and witnesses him take out a group of local thugs, armed with simply a football. The pair come to the conclusion that combining Kung Fu and football is the answer to Iron Leg's problem, and it would allow Golden Leg his dream of coaching a team. Iron Leg enlists the aid of his brothers Iron Vest(Kai Man Tin),Hooking Leg(Chi-Sing Lam),Empty Hand(Kwok Kuen Chan) and Weight Vest(Chi Chung Lam) to form the team Shaolin Soccer, who recruit more players out of their first opponents.

The movie then proceeds to follow the team as they try to win the Chinese Supercup, against all the odds, including bent referees and drug-fueled enemies, and Mui and Iron Leg try to sort out their relationship.

Ok, so the story isn't exactly original, and as the famous comparison says, it is essentially Enter The Dragon meets Escape to Victory, but I would be lying if I said it didn't have a certain unique charm and approach to things. Im sure if you were to try, you could track down some plot holes, but the fact is, if you are going to go into a comedy about a Kung Fu football team doing such things, then to be honest, you probably don't deserve to enjoy it. The film should be merited on it's ability to entertain and make the viewer chuckle, and that it does succeed. I've never really taken to any other martial arts/comedy movies before, they are usually a bit too slapstick for my liking, but Chow,who also directs and played a part in writing, doesn't go overboard, and knows when to throw in the OTT jokes, and when to be a little more subtle.

The sequences of the football games are highly entertaining to watch, full of outlandish moves and crazy goals, I found them an absolute riot to take in, and they are full of flaming footballs,jump-spinning kicks for passes and Iron Headers, not to mention brutal tackles and did I say crazy goals? The movie actually sports what is definitely the least annoying use of bullet-time post Matrix, due to the fact it's done in a genuinely cool and useful fashion, and not overdone either.

I've always stated my dislike for criticising actors performances when done through the subtitled or dubbed medium of film, but to be honest, there doesn't seem to be much to complain about anyway. Tse hams it up wonderfully as the villain of the piece, and all of the team have their likeable qualities. I do feel the need to point out that I did actually think Vicki Zhao's performance was spot on. She pulled off her comedy scenes well, but when she is actually serious, she actually looks like a good actress.

My DVD has both the dubbed US version and the subtitled, full-length cantonese version(why they couldn't have included a dubbed full length version I don't know), and I can't really comment 100% accurately on the quality of the subs, but there certainly weren't any hilariously obvious errors.
On the note of dubbs and this movie, I actually found the fact that the Italian release had the player's voices dubbed by actual Seria A players, including Damiano Tommasi and Marco Delvecchio, to be absolutely awesome, and a brilliant touch by the Italian distributors.

Music in the film is relatively standard, I mean it's good enough to accompany the movie, but I certainly didn't find any of the tunes memorable.

Special effects, well it was rather blatant that CGI was being used, but it wasn't terrible, and a lot of the time the effects were actually pretty good. One thing I took a distaste to, was the ball they used. Despite the fact that Puma had evidently payed for some top notch product placement(I know Asian movies are pretty well known for Product Placement being OTT, but I've never seen anything like this, and Puma obviously like Martial Arts movies, Im sure I've seen Van Damme cutting around in Puma gear in some of his flicks), the players play with one of those horrendous generic balls that are white with the odd black panel, the kind I, in 19 years, have never actually witnessed in real life.

In general, I have to say that I actually enjoyed Shaolin Soccer immensely. I was expecting to like it at least a little, but for it to fail in a lot of ways too, but I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised at just how well Chow gelled the movie's various aspects together into one solid unit(kind of like the task facing whoever takes over the Barcelona hotseat), and I honestly don't have anything really bad to say about the picture, and to be honest, I feel I would be doing the film, and all those who worked on it, a disservice giving it less than 5 stars. While it isn't going to provoke any philosophical thoughts from viewers, it's just a blast to watch, and in all honesty, there wasn't anything I didn't enjoy about the picture, and I would recommend it to anyone whom the prospect of the perfect blend of comedy,martial arts and football sounds appealling.

Summary: Shaolin Soccer is just fun. There really isn't any more that can be said.