Shaolin Girl

Ever since the success of Stephen Chow's Shaollin Soccer in 2001, he's been asked time and again whether a sequel was in the works. There still isn't, but he sort of franchised the idea out to the Japanese and served as executive producer, so the outcome of the deal, was Shaolin Girl. However, the net of it all is that while the intent for a quasi-sequel is there, having the Japanese play characters experts in the classic Chinese form of martial arts might seem a little wrong, just like how the hue and cry came about with Chinese characters portraying Japanese geishas. But if the source in contention was treated with respect, I guess there would be no qualms moving forward, though with the way things were treated here, you would've pondered whether it was done in jest, or in mockery. Shaolin Girl Rin Sakurazara was sent as a kid by her grandfather to China's famed Shaolin school of martial arts to learn to curb and control her wealth of potential, promised power. What this power was, nobody knew, except that everyone knew she had to be protected from the villains lest she gets tempted to go to the Dark Side (yes, so very Star Wars). But she returns upon completion of her training to revive her grandfather's dojo, and does so in quite an impetuous headstrong manner, that she has a few lessons to learn herself, such as humility, camaraderie and teamwork, before she can impart those martial arts lessons. However, despite all that talk about teaming, it still boiled down to a one-woman whackfest for the last act. If you're looking for some serious fighting, then the first two acts of the movie will bore as you only get teases spruced very much by special effects, some bits too, especially those involving Lacrosse, got too repetitive. Kitty Zhang, Chow's new muse from CJ7, ends up in this movie too to provide some lesbian undertones (ok, so I chose to read it that way, but think about it). and although she has a meatier role here as a naive do-gooder, the role still boiled down to a flower vase in cheongsam.