Kung Fu Soccer (2026) Super Review: Stephen Chow’s Comeback Misses the Target

Twenty-five years after Shaolin Soccer sent a football screaming through a stadium wall, Stephen Chow returns to the pitch with a new team, a new tournament and the same promise: kung fu and football, fused into something gloriously daft. Kung Fu Soccer swaps the down-at-heel Shaolin brothers for the Emei Women’s Football Team, a squad of seasoned underdogs written off before a ball is kicked.

It was a huge summer hit at home in China, and on paper it is exactly the reunion fans have waited a generation for. On screen it is something messier: a film with one terrific lead performance and a handful of big laughs, buried under bargain-basement effects and jokes that feel as if they were left on the bench in 2004.

Kung Fu Soccer has the boots and the badge, but it plays like a tribute act to its own past.

Movie at a Glance

• UK and Ireland cinemas: 23 October 2026, in original-language and English-dubbed versions
• US and Canada cinemas: 23 October 2026 (limited)
• Distributor: Encore Films
• Director: Stephen Chow
• Screenplay: Stephen Chow and Hunny Ho
• Starring: Zhang Xiaofei, Dilraba Dilmurat, Lay Zhang (Zhang Yixing), Carina Lau and Takeru Satoh
• Runtime: 106 minutes
• UK certificate: 12A
• Genre: Sports action-comedy

A Familiar Tournament With a New Team

The structure is as simple as a cup draw. The Supreme and Invincible Cup returns, sixteen teams arrive, and the Emei squad, older than its rivals and dismissed by the press, sets out to prove that its blend of martial arts and ball skills is no gimmick. Chow and his co-writer do not waste time on a training montage or a team-building prologue; the film more or less kicks off at the first whistle and keeps playing.

That pace is both a strength and a problem. The matches arrive in quick succession, each against an opponent defined by a single broad national joke, and the effect quickly becomes repetitive. The rivals are caricatures rather than characters, and some of the gags aimed at them, including one crude piece of casting, feel like relics of an older, cruder comedy that should have stayed in the archive.

Zhang Xiaofei Carries the Side

If the film has a reason to exist beyond nostalgia, it is Zhang Xiaofei. As Shuangshuang, the team’s ferociously competitive, endlessly shouting captain, she walks a tightrope between unbearable and oddly touching. She is a bully, a perfectionist and a mess, and Zhang plays all of it with total physical commitment, so that the character’s brittleness gradually becomes the film’s emotional spine.

Dilraba Dilmurat brings a cooler, lighter rhythm as the star striker and estranged best friend, and their squabbling partnership gives the middle stretch its best scenes. Lay Zhang has fun with a preening, hair-obsessed coach, while Carina Lau steals moments as the team’s supposedly secluded mentor. The supporting squad is less fortunate: most players get a single trait and a single joke, and few register beyond that.

Where the Magic Has Gone

The great disappointment is the football itself. Shaolin Soccer felt tactile; its fantasy grew out of real grass, real bodies and wonderfully timed slapstick. Here, the pitch, the crowds and many of the superpowered shots look synthetic, closer to a video-game cut scene than a stadium. Some of that cartoonishness is clearly deliberate, and the most absurd set pieces, from phantom balls to flaming shots that streak past aircraft, do raise a laugh. But the action rarely builds any real tension, and the sense of a team improving together never arrives.

Chow’s distinctive mix of innocence and cruelty is still visible in flashes, especially in a scene-stealing blind masseuse who keeps attacking the wrong people. The editing keeps things moving at a brisk clip and the music does its job. Yet the film’s episodic, sketch-like construction leaves the emotional payoff feeling unearned, and its closing moments feel more like a promise of things to come than a reward.

Is There Still a Place for Chow’s Comedy?

There is a version of this film that turns a gender-flipped sequel into a sharp, joyful comment on women’s sport and the people who underestimate it. Occasionally Kung Fu Soccer brushes against that idea, particularly when Shuangshuang confronts how little anyone expected of her team. Mostly, though, it settles for the noise of a remix rather than the shape of a new song.

For devoted fans, there will be enough familiar lunacy and one excellent central performance to make the trip worthwhile. For anyone hoping that Chow had rediscovered the inventive spark of his early-2000s peak, this is a frustrating, uneven return.

Watch the Official Trailer

Get a feel for the tournament madness with the official English-dubbed UK trailer.

Does Stephen Chow’s brand of comedy still score for you, or is Shaolin Soccer impossible to follow? Tell us without spoilers.