Take your best shot at ‘Shaolin Soccer’

Charitably speaking, “Shaolin Soccer,” an underdog team farce about a brotherhood of kung fu monks who apply their superhuman talents to football Europa, is not quite funny and passably silly.

And it’s not as bad as it could have been. As bad as it was, actually.

Stephen Chow’s popular Hong Kong flick was imported by Miramax Films, which very nearly released it here with dubbed English voices.

Take my word for it; that was ba-ad.

Viewers will hear the original Cantonese, with English subtitles, in the version that opened Friday at Landmark’s E Street Cinema.

“Shaolin” stars Mr. Chow as Sing, a down-and-out Hong Kong street peddler with an unexplored talent for kicking aluminum cans into the stratosphere.

Fung (Man Tat Ng), a hobbled former soccer star known as “Golden Leg,” notices Sing’s gift and the two put their heads together: Why not do kung fu, soccer-style?

For Sing, it’s a way out of the gutter. For Fung, it’s a way to get back at his nemesis, Hung (Patrick Tse), the nefarious coach of Team Evil, a gang of blackshirts jacked up on “that American drug,” steroids.

First, Sing must persuade his “brothers” to rejoin the Shaolin fold, which is no easy task: In one of the movie’s more humorous sequences, Sing’s brethren avoids him like SARS, as his path to kung fu enlightenment has led to nothing but humiliation.

Once assembled, the Shaolin boys rediscover their mojo: Before long, Sing is turning the soccer ball into what golfers call a “worm-burner,” a ground-scorching line-drive that can leave a cyclone in its trail.

Superheroic special effects have one of the brothers levitating and another throttling soccer balls from his solar plexus.

Mr. Chow tries for a slight lift from lowbrow with a semi-touching romance between Sing and Mui (Vicki Zhao), a facially-disfigured girl who uses kung fu to make tasty biscuits.

Between the soccer-field stunts and those sweet rolls, “Shaolin Soccer” equals a whole lot of cheese.

*1/2

TITLE: “Shaolin Soccer”

RATING: PG-13 (Mild violence)

CREDITS: Directed by Stephen Chow. Produced by Kwok-fai Yeung. Written by Mr. Chow and Kan-Cheung Tsang. Cinematography by Pak-huen Kwen and Ting Wo Kwon.

RUNNING TIME: 87 minutes, in Cantonese with subtitles.

MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS