Kritiken

Recently converted soccer fans hungry for more incredible pirouettes can't go wrong with one the best films ever made about this sport (or any sport, for that matter), an action comedy from Chinese household name Chow, about a pathetic group of martial artists who find themselves in the act of playing soccer. It's in the scenes of humiliation and awkwardness that Shaolin Soccer gets hard to watch, but once you've seen it enough times, it's those scenes that make you laugh the hardest.

The star uncharacteristically shares the spotlight with the film's other attraction: a brilliant melding of computer-assisted animation with acrobatic stunts. Gravity is blithely defied by flaming soccer balls, flying players, hurtling soccer balls whose force ploughs furrows through the field and strips the clothes from desperate goaltenders, etc. This emphasis on the film's images displaces wordplay from its usual front-and-centre position in a Chow film.