YMMV / Shaolin Soccer

• Awesome Music: The opening credits
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: When Sing first meets Mui at the bun stand, he sings a song to compliment her use of cooking and Tai Chi. When she accuses him of mocking her, a nearby patron backs up his sincerity with his own song, which inspires everyone nearby to join in a synchronized dance number. Naturally, this scene was deleted from some airings. Sing's song is mimicking a famous scene from 1960 Chinese musical called Liu San Jie (renamed Third Sister Liu in English), where the male lead first meets the female lead with a song, the same song that Sing sings to Mui.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: "Empty Hand", Team Shaolin's goalie, who is also a Bruce Lee Clone. In fact, this earned Danny Chan a role in a legitimate Bruce Lee 2008 television biopic after this, including a Role Reprise as Lee in Ip Man 3.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Unsurprisingly, dubs exist for "soccer giant" countries like France and Brazil.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Fung's struggles in the film become much harder to stomach after knowing his actor Ng Man-tat's life after the film. This was the last movie Ng would star in alongside Chow. The pair's relationship soured allegedly during the filming of Kung Fu Hustle, when Chow let another actor take the role which was meant for Ng. Over the next two decades, the relationship gradually mended, but was never the same again. Ng also had multiple health problems: diabetes, heart disease and liver cancer, among others.^note Chow had actually invited Ng to star in The Mermaid in 2015, but Ng had to decline due to his poor health. Just before his death in February 2021, Ng even said publicly ^note during episode 3 of Season 6 of Ace vs Ace, recorded in November 2020, but first aired in February 2021 that he's still open to collaboration with Chow as long as "Stephen's not retired, and I'm not dead". Even more poignantly, Tin Kai-man (Iron Shirt) was the one who made the announcement of Ng's death on behalf of his family.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The ominous Buddhist droning-chanting we hear as Team Shaolin recovers their abilities may have a different effect on viewers now that the 2010 South Africa World Cup has popularized the vuvuzela.
    • Speaking of which, Empty Hand has been compared to Guillermo Ochoa, and curb-stomp matches shown in this movie aren't that far from reality after what Germany did to Brazil in the 2014 World Cup.
    • The scene where all of the Shaolin monks stay still in their kung-fu poses like the camera pans through the soccer field predates the mannequin challenge that circulated the internet in 2016.
  • Fans of supposed Spiritual Successor Inazuma Eleven have already drew connections between it and this movie.
• Hollywood Homely: Chinese actress Zhao Wei is exceptionally beautiful in Real Life. While her character Mui should be the opposite (particularly because of the acne), she still appears as what Zhao Wei naturally looks like.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Iron Head's shocked face is a popular reaction image macro.
  • "Go back to Mars! Earth is very dangerous!"^note Mui becomes the substitute goalie for Team Shaolin in the final game against Team Evil and shaves her head completely bald. Sing's reaction to the character's appearance is this quote
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Several uses of The Oner to depict Team Shaolin's rampage across the field, practical wirework and all, make the CGI soccer ball even more obvious.
  • When the team dramatically reassembles on the rooftop, the white scraft worn by "Light Weight" is clearly being pulled by a wire.
  • Since Stephen Chow obviously couldn't have his female lead shave her head they used a bald cap. Unfortunately stuffing all that hair in there gave her a rather oversized head.
• Squick: Weight Vest eating an egg out of Iron Shirt's mouth... and it happens twice. The bloopers extra even show Iron Shirt making a face to let the egg yolks pour out of his mouth.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: How many viewers who have seen the original Chinese version feel about the American release cutting off a lot of scenes. Thankfully, the American DVD gives the option to watch the original version.
• Values Dissonance: Presumably why the underwear no-hospital scene was Played for Laughs.
• The Woobie: Mui, a humble baker who has poor self-esteem and a harsh boss. She tries to make herself more beautiful but it ended up hurting her even more, her crush on Sing gets turned down; it broke her so much she ended up getting fired since the stress caused her to mess up her baking. She does get better at the end, thankfully.
• Woolseyism: In the American dub, the first Team that Team Shaolin goes against is called Team Puma, based off of the puma logo on their uniforms. In the original Cantonese dub? Team Tofu.