Kung Fu Flunk

With a mixture of great actors and novices, this film was a bit over the place. The initial concept of the film wasn't bad, an abandoned child is taken into a martial arts school whom later gets discovered and exploited to be a basketball player. The reason that a basketball team would take up such a person isn't too bad either.

But then that's it. The rest of the film falls downhill from then on. With not much rivalry or things at stake for our protagonist, Fong Sai Git, played by Jay Chou, his character development from start to finish remained the same. They barely showed him wooing his love interest either. They could've developed his character much much more, as I thought his role was quite charming. A naive yet cocky guy that knows martial arts. The director could've done so much more with it.

The team mates were written to be much deep characters, each with their own flaws in life and haunted from their past. But this too wasn't shown well either. You would also expect them to give Jay a hard time for being the new guy. They sort of did in the first scene, then suddenly, he's part of the group.

The villains of the film are very one dimensional also. There wasn't a need to develop them, but the way they acted made the film loss it's credibility. As this film at times wants to be serious and other times to be slap stick fudge.

The special effects of the film wasn't too bad for a Hong Kong film. Since rendering a basketball isn't too hard, shots from downtown looked believable.

Overall, this film just felt all over the place. It seemed the director was trying too hard to put everything into the film and lost it's main goal, to tell a story about a basketball player searching for his parents. The final conclusion of the film also seemed to be too far fetched and probably added in so that they can include certain actors into the film.

This film didn't have to be Shaolin Soccer or Kung Fu level. But what it could've had was some heart... which is it's main flaw.

1/5