Shaolin Soccer

[EUOL]

So, this movie was something of a disappointment to me.  I'm distinctly underwhelmed.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

I haven't seen the US release edited version. I loved the extended directors' cut version (more than Hero).

[EUOL]

Maybe it has something my version didn't.  

While I didn't hate it, the visuals were only mildly impressive (they seemed to use sloppy cgi a lot of the time.)  The plotting was choppy (we got to see team Evil precisely ONE time before the 'heroes' got to go fight them.  Plus, why did the gangster team immediately gain superpowers when they decided to join with the Shaolin team?) and the motivations were rarely explained (Why should we care which team wins?  By the end, I didn’t think that the Shaolin team deserved any kind of victory.  They barely had to train to become soccer masters, they reveled in their riches, and they all seemed extremely arrogant.)

On top of that, the worldbuilding seemed weak.  (Three of the four teams we got to see compete in the final tournament had superpowers, yet the other team seemed dumbfounded to see people play like that.  As a matter of fact, the Shaolin team was stupefied both times they met a team with people who had superpowers.)  I think the movie’s propensity toward ridiculous, over-acted comedy overshadowed some of the cool cinematography tricks and took valuable time that could have been spent in characterization and plotting.

A fun watch, but all around I was left thinking about the mistakes more than I did the successes.  By the end, I felt like I did while I was watching the Scorpion King.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

I didn't view the ridiculousness as a mistake at all. Maybe that's because I saw the version that had the huge group dance routine at the bread shop left in...it became clear to me that the ridiculousness was on purpose. Of course, when you do ridiculousness you walk a fine line, but to me it pulled it off.

[Fellfrosch]

I need to see this then, because I loved the Scorpion King.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Also, we didn't need to see the evil team very often, because we saw the evil team's owner a lot of times, starting at the very beginning in the flashback, and the conflict there was between the evil owner and the crippled manager dude.

[Lieutenant Kije]

That group dance at the bread shop made the entire movie worthwhile to me.  That was pure cinema magic.    It wasn't a great movie (or even a good one,) but worth the time I spent to watch it.

After that scene, it seemed to get less ridiculous, and less worth my time.

[EUOL]

Yeah, the beginning was much better than the ending, I think.  I just couldn't get over the fact that these 'heroes' were completely unsympathetic to me.