Produced by Stephen Chow, "Shaolin Girl" centres on a young female kung fu teacher, Rin, who must take over her grandfather's dojo. In order to prepare herself, she travels to China for 3,000 days of grueling Shaolin kung fu training. On her return to Japan, she works to rebuild the dojo and joins her university lacrosse club, putting her considerable physical prowess to work for the team.

With great power, comes great responsibility!

However, this film didn't exactly come with great power and let's not even talk about responsibility, because it was definitely responsible for boring me to tears. Having known Stephen Chow, the director for both "Shaolin Soccer" and "Kung Fu Hustle", one would have such high expectations that this would equal "Shaolin Soccer" at least, if not better. Then again, this film wasn't directed by him, only produced, so maybe that can be a good excuse. Somehow or rather, it seems odd to have Japanese actors portraying experts in Chinese martial arts, but then again, there were Chinese acting as geishas before.

In this movie, Rin (Kou Shibasaki) is a hardheaded girl who is passionate about Shaolin kung fu. After training in China, she returns to Japan only to find the Shaolin Kung Fu Dojo tattered and abandoned. Through her struggles to restore her grandfather's school and also the spirit of kung fu, she finds her master, Iwai (Yosuke Eguchi). From the trailers, one would assume that the story would revolve around her playing a sport called lacrosse, but it is only a minor part in the movie. It actually focuses on Rin's ability to control her inborn strength and to understand the meaning of Shaolin kung fu and the fight between good and evil.

The action scenes here are really sloppy and slow, unfortunately. The actors seem so weak in their kung fu movements, as if they weren't paid enough to eat! So much for the main purpose of this film – action sequences. There are a lot of pep talk between Rin and Iwai that can bore you to tears.

Even worse, the climax showdown is ridiculous battle of good and evil between Rin and Yuichiro (Toru Nakamura) in a heavily CG-assisted sequence, as he fights and tempts her into crossing over to the dark side (so tell me something new).

In a more positive light, there are some comical moments, though not exactly sidesplitting by Lam and Tin, the inseparable duo who stands firm in Stephen Chow's movies. The choice of music during the scenes also fits in perfectly and gets you into the mood.

On a whole, this movie is humdrum and I'd hardly put it under the genre of comedy, as it is barely laughable.