I've seen Shaolin Soccer but I'm not totally convinced I'm qualified to review it.  For starters, the version I saw at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival ran about a half-hour longer than the cut that will debut on US screens (that's, like, a third of the movie missing).  The TIFF version was dubbed in English, while the rendering you'll see in theatres will be in Cantonese with English subtitles.  And then there's the slightly less relevant problem of me having raging hard-ons for soccer, The Bad News Bears and badly dubbed Asian wire-fu flicks.

My predilection for this microscopic genre aside (I can be as open-minded as the next critic), I mention these things because I don't know how much Soccer has changed over the past year.  What I do know is that I had a great time watching it, and so did the rest of the Toronto audience.  We're weren't alone, either, as Soccer is already the most financially successful homegrown film in the history of Hong Kong cinema.  It also won six Hong Kong Film Awards (including Best Picture, Director and Actor) and was nominated for seven others.

Soccer was written and directed by Stephen Chow, who also plays the lead in the film.  Chow is largely unknown in this country outside the bootleg DVD circle, but he's gained notoriety for making pictures that blend genres that just don't belong together, even if you've been smoking a lot of dope.  For example, his 1996 film The God of Cookery blended martial arts and cuisine, creating something akin to Crouching Tiger, Iron Chef.  To me, Chow brings the same kind of vibe to the screen as the Farrelly brothers.  These filmmakers love broad, gross humor, but they're also able to create characters and stories that are, at their core, warm and heartfelt.

After a quick black-and-white prologue of a 1981 match that went to penalty kicks, Soccer quickly establishes our two heroes.  One is the still-gimpy Golden Leg (Ng Man Tat), whose golden leg was broken because he didn't take part in the fix back in '81.  The other is a monk-turned-garbageman named Sing (Chow) who keeps the streets clean using the crazy Shaolin stuff he learned back at the monastery.  Golden Leg, who has recently been fired from the judiciously named Team Evil, is looking to form his own soccer club with the hopes of exacting revenge.  He sees something special in Sing and recruits him, along with all of his ex-monastery brothers – Seven Samurai-style – who have all grown into largely miserable adults.

If you've seen The Bad News Bears, you know how things are going to play out, right down to the five-time reigning champion Team Evil outplaying Golden Leg's team until the second half of the Super Cup final.  What you won't see coming is the hysterical recruitment process of Sing's pals, who have names like Iron Head and Hooking Leg.  Or the strange relationship between Sing and a sticky-bun maker with incredibly bad skin (Vicki Zhao).  Or the impromptu song-and-dance number.  Or the appearances of Hong Kong beauties Cecilia Cheung and Karen Mok playing on the opposing teams.

It's all enough to make you ignore the Believe in Yourself message, and if it isn't, the outtakes at the end certainly will.

1:26 –

for martial arts action and some thematic elements