ReviewKung Fu Soccer movie review: Stephen Chow’s stale, gender-swapped Shaolin Soccer spin-off

Dilraba Dilmurat and Zhang Xiaofei lead a team of female football martial artists in Chow’s film that falls far short of its 2001 predecessor

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Dilraba Dilmurat in a still from Kung Fu Soccer, Stephen Chow’s gender-flipped spin-off of his 2001 comedy classic Shaolin Soccer. The Hong Kong director’s first film in seven years lacks tension and has visuals that resemble AI slop.

Edmund Lee

Published: 5:17pm, 13 Jul 2026Updated: 5:52pm, 13 Jul 2026

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 reimagining 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.

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While Shaolin Soccer derived much of its fun from its protagonists discovering their football aptitude through their unique martial arts abilities, Kung Fu Soccer offers a relatively muddled tale of how a ragtag team of women from the Emei martial arts sect adjust their mindset to win it all.

The central conflict revolves around Emei’s “nearly 40-year-old” captain and de facto coach Shuang (Zhang Xiaofei of Hi, Mom), who must learn to set aside her domineering ways to reconcile with her attacking partner Jade (Dilraba Dilmurat) and recognise the value of her teammates – all with a little nudge from their duplicitous mentor Xu Feng (Lay Zhang Yixing).

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Dilraba Dilmurat and Zhang Xiaofei lead a team of female football martial artists in Chow’s film that falls far short of its 2001 predecessor

Dilraba Dilmurat and Zhang Xiaofei lead a team of female football martial artists in Chow’s film that falls far short of its 2001 predecessor