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

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 o ...