Twenty five years after scoring a resounding critical and commercial hit with the martial arts sports comedy Shaolin Soccer, Hong Kong film industry legend Stephen Chow unleashes an absolute howler of a sequel that fails to replicate anything that made its predecessor such a success. The most notable difference between the two films is deliberately obscured by its English title, as Kung Fu Soccer – or “Kung Fu Women’s Football” in Chinese – pivots away from Chow’s earlier protagonist Fung, and his colourful collection of dextrous dribbling heroes, to focus on a new team of female football players. Much like how Ted Lasso has chosen to champion the women’s game in its latest season, so too does Chow here, but the results warrant an immediate VAR ruling.

Nominally set in Hong Kong, thanks to a handful of instantly recognisable locations, Kung Fu Soccer follows in the footsteps of all of Chow’s recent offerings by focusing its attentions squarely on a mainland China audience, with every character speaking almost exclusively in Mandarin throughout. The plot follows the changing fortunes of a team of mismatched underdogs as they compete in the “Supremes and Invincibles Cup”, hosted at Kowloon’s new Kai Tak Stadium, which is open exclusively to squads of enhanced female players hailing from the four corners of the globe.

Led by their headstrong yet over-the-hill captain and coach Shuang (Zhang Xiaofei), this rag-tag bunch of has-beens and never-will-bes must overcome limited funding, poor training facilities, a duplicitous manager, and persistent in-fighting even before considering anything as pressing as squad selections or on-field tactics.

But this quickly becomes the most glaring problem with Chow’s haphazardly assembled caper: nobody, whether on the field or behind the camera, appears to understand the first thing about football. Audiences coming to Kung Fu Soccer without any prior exposure to the sport might be forgiven for surmising that football matches are won not by the team who scores the most goals, but rather by the team with the most players still standing when the final whistle is blown.

Read my full ScreenAnarchy review here