#patrick tse

Shaolin Soccer

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Selebriti sentiasa dilaporkan di media utama mengenai filem terbaru mereka, tetapi kehidupan peribadi mereka juga diambil berat oleh orang ramai. [sociallocker]

Bintang-bintang  dalam gambar di atas menjadi topik  yang popular dan berjaya menarik perhatian orang ramai kerana pasagana mereka yang  terlalu muda daripada mereka.

Patrick Tse, bapa kepada pelakon Nicholas Tse, dikenali sebagai salah…

Shaolin Soccer

7.3/10 - IMDb

(2001) PG - 1hr 27min

A young Shaolin follower reunites with his discouraged brothers to form a soccer team using their martial art skills to their advantage.

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Shaolin Soccer (2001, Hong Kong)

You won't be seeing any Shaolin soccer at this year's World Cup (though there have been exceptions like The Netherlands' Nigel de Jong's kick in this infamous moment from the 2010 final). But there is plenty of Shaolin in Stephen Chow's ridiculous, nonsensical, and entertaining film Shaolin Soccer. From its premise, its execution, and its resolution, Shaolin Soccer follows a select amount of soccer's rules to a fanservice-y, crowd-pleasing way. There's not much thinking required here - what did you expect from a title like Shaolin Soccer - and we are all the beneficiaries for its giddy corniness and brainlessness.

Disgraced Hong Kong soccer star "Golden Leg" Fung (Ng Man Tat) is dirt broke and limping around the streets of Hong Kong like with his head downcast like Takashi Shimura's character in Ikiru (1952). One day, he meets Shaolin master Sing (Stephen Chow), who is out and about advertising Shaolin kung fu to consumerist, busy Hong Kongers. After a short conversation, Sing hatches the idea of marrying kung fu with soccer to enter a prestigious Hong Kong soccer tournament. Gathering his Shaolin brothers (all in various states of poverty or disenchantment with the society they tried to promote kung fu to) together, Sing and Fung - who assumes the role of head coach - have pieced together an extremely potent attacking and defensive force and burn through their opponents. As the team progresses, Sing meets Mui (Zhao Wei), an acne-afflicted baker who uses t'ai chi to bake buns. Yes, they fall in love... what did you expect? And yes, the team - now named "Team Shaolin" - against the almost-always-defending champions Team Evil (yes, Team Evil). It's a revenge match for Fung, who played his last game in the final against Team Evil many years ago. Even worse, Team Evil is coached by the man responsible for Fung's limp in Hung (Patrick Tse).

Are we watching actual Shaolin soccer or are we watching soccer with superhero powers? Is anybody doing any drug tests on Team Evil because they're clearly being aided by performance-enhancing drugs (Hung controls the tournament though, so there)? Why is there a depthless romance between Sing and Mui and what is up with Mui's sudden transformation into a stunning beauty? Why the hell is there a Michael Jackson-influenced dancing scene in the middle of the film? Why are you asking so many questions and not just going with it? The only answer to all of these questions and other questions tightly-wound movie consumers might ask is that all of this is played for harmless laughs. Some of the hokiest moments in the film are direct references to the likes of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Much of the action is stylistically mocking The Matrix (1999) as early-2000s CGI is used quite often.

If there are any massive flaws to the film, it resides in its structure. Like any action film where a leader must rustle up a bunch of followers in order to achieve a stated goal, there are expository scenes introducing many of the members of Team Shaolin. Chow spends so much of his film rounding up the Shaolin brothers and building them up to be something more than just another supporting character. Yet when the team is finally assembled and the first practices and the tournament begins, everybody except Fung, Hung, Sing, and Mui are sidelined. They become unimportant and one gets the sense that Fung's Team Shaolin could have defeated Team Evil with far less than eleven players. Who knows; they might have been able to win the cup with Sing and Mui alone.

There is little to dislike about the three Team Shaolin leads. Fung is not a pathetic limper that Hung likes to believe he is. When assembling the team for the first time for practices, Fung has to school his players on their footballing ignorance and berate them for their lack of concentration (Shaolin monks behaving like Kindergarteners is not exactly what he had in mind). Sing and Mui are a screwball comedy-like couple except for their very personas are the opposite of what you expect due to their gender. Sing is the head-in-the-clouds, romantically incompetent, and well-meaning Shaolin student to Mui's grounded, quietly determined, and realistic bun-making and - eventually - footballing badassery.

To quote from Roger Ebert's 2004 review of the film: "It is piffle, yes, but superior piffle". Shaolin Soccer is a soccer movie, it's a revenge flick, and it's a screwball comedy with alternately bizarre (like the egg scene... which is made all the more curiouser in the English dub version but that version isn't provided in the link) and gut-bursting moments of comedy. A massive hit in Asia, Shaolin Soccer is a shot of self-aware campiness and absurdity that functions like none other. It's also a good option if you have the time to switch off your brain for two hours. From the Bruce Lee goalie, the hilarious first game in the tournament, and so many other moments, you can't fail to be entertained and there is no possible way that Shaolin Soccer will brighten your day. Unless your nation loses in the World Cup final, of course. If that's the case, look on the bright side... you could have been a fan of Team Evil.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. This is the first film being counted for the Summer Movie Odyssey.

★ Star Family →  The Tse Family

Relationship :  Father, Mother, Daughter & Son 

小資女孩向前衝.