REVIEW 'Kung Fu Soccer': Stephen Chow's stale, gender-swapped Shaolin Soccer spin-off

A scene from "Kung Fu Soccer" / Captured from YouTube

2/5 stars

It has been seven years since Stephen Chow Sing-chi last released a film - his longest hiatus yet as a filmmaker. His last feature, 2019's "The New King of Comedy," was a poignant reworking of his 1999 classic "King of Comedy." Now the Hong Kong comedy superstar offers a gender-flipped reimaging of another of his greatest hits - Shaolin Soccer (2001) - squarely aimed at the mainland Chinese box office.

Unlike his 2019 effort, however, "Kung Fu Soccer" is vastly inferior to its predecessor in quality and creativity, playing as if it were partly crafted with AI. Its silly gags are often mere retreads of previously successful beats, and its stadium views would not look out of place in a 20-year-old video game.

Produced and directed by Chow from a script he co-wrote with magician and YouTuber Hunny Ho Wing-suen, the film jettisons his usual underdog narrative and throws us straight into an international women's football tournament. There, the Emei team enters as an unknown quantity alongside other similarly physics-defying teams of superhumans.

While "Shaolin Soccer" derived much of its fun from its protagonists discovering their football aptitude through their unique martial arts abilities, "Kung Fu Soccer" offers a relatively muddled tale of how a ragtag team of women from the Emei martial arts sect adjust their mindset to win it all.

The central conflict revolves around Emei's "nearly 40-year-old" captain and de facto coach Shuang (Zhang Xiaofei of "Hi, Mom"), who must learn to set aside her domineering ways to reconcile with her attacking partner Jade (Dilraba Dilmurat) and recognise the value of her teammates - all with a little nudge from their duplicitous mentor Xu Feng (Lay Zhang Yixing).

If "Kung Fu Soccer"'s predominantly female cast gives the impression of an empowering tale, it is merely accidental.

Relationship troubles drive several plot lines: Shuang resents Jade for previously abandoning the team to pursue an ill-fated marriage, while a depressed player (Angel Woo Yu-on) relies on her grievance over a painful break-up to unleash her "ultimate" move.

Among the supporting cast, Sisley Choi Sea-pui stands out as the blind physio who delivers some of the best physical comedy. Louis Cheung Kai-chung is unremarkable as a biased referee, while Carina Lau Ka-ling, as Emei's grandmaster, exists in an altogether different film. Jimmy O. Yang is underused as a stadium manager, and Takeru Satoh is one-note on the bench of an opposing team.

A scene from "Kung Fu Soccer" / Captured from YouTube

While "Kung Fu Soccer" is intermittently amusing, the film's disinterest in Shuang's backstory or current ambition - all we know is that she was an orphan - renders it a tensionless watch.

Audience engagement is further hampered by match sequences shot in front of green screens rather than on an actual pitch, giving the film the unshakeable vibe of lifeless AI slop.

For an action comedy about football, the writers' apparent lack of insight into the sport is a little glaring. Here, almost every match is decided by players kicking as hard as they can to score directly from distance, and even the film's climactic final move hinges on a clear violation of the laws of the game.

Read the review at SCMP.