Shaolin Soccer

Dir: Stephen Chow

2001

****

I’ve never been much of a football fan (Soccer to you non-Brits) but if the premiership was anywhere near as exciting as Stephen Chow’s 2001 comedy, Shaolin Soccer, then I’d have a season ticket with front row seats. The combination of soccer and kung fu works well but it is the inventive, and often surreal comedy that makes this film so uniquely wonderful. Sing (played by writer/director Stephen Chow) is a master of Shaolin kung fu, whose goal in life is to promote the spiritual and practical benefits of the art to modern society. He experiments with various methods, but none bear positive results. He then meets Golden Foot Fung, a legendary Hong Kong soccer star in his day, who is now walking with a limp, following the betrayal of a former teammate Hung, now a rich businessman. Sing explains his desires to Fung who offers his services to coach him in soccer. Sing is compelled by the idea of promoting kung fu through soccer and agrees to enlist his former Shaolin brothers to form a team under Fung's management and they attempt to put together an unbeatable soccer team. Fung invites a rather vicious team to play against them and the thugs proceed to give the Shaolin team a brutal beating. When all seems lost, the Shaolin disciples reawaken and utilise their special powers, dismantling the other team's rough play with ease. The thugs then give up and ask to join Sing's team. Sing meets Mui (Zhao Wei), a baker with severe acne who uses Tai chi to bake mantou, and the pair get close during a late night shopping spree. She soon forms an attachment to Sing and even gets a makeover in an attempt to impress him. However, this backfires and when Mui reveals her feelings to him, as he tells her he only wants to be her friend. This revelation, coupled with the constant bullying from her overbearing boss, leads Mui to disappear. Team Shaolin enters the open cup competition in Hong Kong, where they chalk up successive and often ridiculous one-sided victories. They end up meeting Team Evil in the final, owned by none other than Hung. Team Evil had been injected with an American drug, granting them superhuman strength and speed, making them practically invincible. They bring Team Shaolin back to reality when their amazing capabilities prove more than a match for them. After Team Evil takes out Team Shaolin's goalkeepers, Mui, who has shaved her hair and got rid of her acne, reappears to keep goal for Team Shaolin. In their final attack, Team Evil's striker leaps into the sky and kicks the ball with enormous force towards Mui but she uses her martial art to divert and stop it, thus preventing a goal. Mui and Sing combine their martial skills and rocket the ball downfield. The ball plows through Team Evil's goal post, thereby scoring the winning goal. Sing is then thrown into the air in celebration as the trophy is presented to him and his team. A newspaper article then shows Hung being stripped of his title of soccer chairman and sent to jail for five years, while Team Evil players are permanently banned from playing soccer professionally. Sing goes out for a morning walk and feels happy to see people practicing kung fu. The camera pans to the poster of Sing and Mui who have married and become famous. It is essentially your typical underdog story of a team who rise to become champions, except far more surreal than usual. The martial art sections are spectacular, with exaggerated kung fu moves that are almost cartoon-like in their execution. The inspiration for Shaolin Soccer came from Chow wanting an unique premise for a martial arts action film. The over the top CGI and kinetic soccer moves were an inspiration that came from a classic Japanese anime called Captain Tsubasa. The animation was very popular in Hong Kong during the 1990s when it proved popular with all ages. It had a cult following in Europe as well. With the advent of CGI, Chow realised he could make it into a real-life feature film, admitting “the idea of combining it with Kung Fu was in my head for many years but we had to wait for the CG technology to mature”. Chow had intended for this film to appeal to a global audience, stating, "I can't rely on the local market, because it's too small, so since Shaolin Soccer it's always my ambition to go international". Shaolin Soccer ended up having its own comic run following the popularity of the film. The film works on many different levels and it is all down to Chow sticking to his guns when producers and studio tried to convince him to make more traditional decisions. Apart from several veteran actors, Chow cast several people in his entourage who had no prior acting experience before Shaolin Soccer. For example, Lam Chi Chung (Light Weight) had worked as Chow's screenwriter and Danny Chan Kwok-kwan (Empty Hand) was the dance choreographer hired to design the "Michael Jackson dance number" that followed Sing and Mui's first meeting early in the film and Tin Kai-man (Iron Shirt) had been Chow's production manager on several movies. Many of Chow’s previous films are referenced in one way or another and he had Chan wear Bruce Lee's yellow-and-black tracksuit as a tribute because only the goalkeeper "can wear a special uniform." Chow defends his decision to hire non-actors, saying, "In terms of finding talent, I try to bring out the funniest thing I notice about them during casting, if it made us laugh at the casting, it will also do on the big screen." The film was big in the US despite the fact it was never released there. People heard about it from word of mouth and sought out illegal copies. The American studios wanted to release it but Chow wouldn’t allow them to dub it into English. Chow’s creativity and his integrity have produced a one of a kind surreal joy. You can no longer state that you don’t like sports films once you’ve watched Shaolin Soccer.