A man is on the run after he made the bells belonging to another man chime all the way to Norway. He starts playing football, and his idol soon becomes his enemy when it turns out that the football star is a cheater. Will the good guy win?
I did not expect much of The Champions, but man, this was an entertaining movie that I think you will enjoy if you liked ‘Shaolin Soccer. It’s not a martial arts movie, but Yuen Biao and Dick Wei mix fighting with football. The referees in the matches are the worst of all time, especially in the last match. It’s more like a battlefield than a football match, but it’s so much fun.
The football matches are ridiculous. They are not realistic, but they are sort of impressive without any use of CGI, like in Shaolin Soccer. I think Stephen Chow borrowed a lot from The Champions.
I love Yuen Biao, but it is Dick Wei who steals the show. He is way funnier than Yuen Biao since he has that lovable villain face, and the dance scene is fantastic. It is the scenes with these two that carry the movie. The story is poor, but when these two are in the same scene, they draw you in and keep your eyes glued to the screen. They are so great together, but again, Dick Wei is the actor who steals the show. I guess most of you are here to watch Yuen Biao, but even though he is a fantastic, acrobatic martial artist, he does not have the screen charisma that Dick Wei possesses.
This feels like a Stephen Chow movie. There is no dead time, and the humor is, for the most part, simple and funny. The humor is charming, and Yuen Biao and Dick Wei have great chemistry. But there is one scene when a man is burning up that felt wrong. It seemed like it was a scene taken from another movie in a different genre. The man did not stop burning! Maybe he is still burning after forty years?