Shaolin Grandma (2008)

There are times when I get handed a movie so ludicrous that I am torn between burying it in the backyard late at night in hopes that no one else will ever see it or to bring out into the open to be mocked and ridiculed in hopes that no one will ever want to see it. Such is the quandary I find myself in when approaching director Kotaro Terauchi’s SHAOLIN GRANDMA, an oddball “comedy” from Japan that spoofs producer Stephen Chow’s SHAOLIN GIRL, as well as other martial arts movies while making fun of the elderly with distinctly localized humor that will have a hard time being understood anywhere other than Japan.

SHAOLIN GRANDMA stars 67-year-old Chiyoko Asami, whose previous claim to fame is as an elderly character on a variety show that cast members are sometimes forced to kiss. The fact that she looks like Wong Yut-fei, aka “Iron Head,” from SHAOLIN SOCCER seems to be part of the joke. She plays Miyoko, a Shaolin kung fu instructor found apparently dead in her apartment by the local mailman. While waiting for the police to arrive he begins reading about her absurd life in a series of scrolls.

Through a series of flashbacks we follow a mute Miyoko from her early days as leader of a Shaolin school and her defeat at the hands of a young and attractive rival, Ippon-ashi (Nao Nagasawa), along with her black, afro-wearing sidekick, to her exile into the city with her two loyal followers. From there she goes from doing lewd street dancing with her two followers as singing backup to burlesque stripper in a nightclub run by a foreigner. Imagine the Shaolin lounge act gag in SHAOLIN SOCCER but far less funny and stretched too thin. After the owner is arrested in a raid, Miyoko ends up living on the street until she meets an elderly gentleman and applies her martial arts training to becoming a winning gateball player.

From here Miyoko writes and illustrates several volumes of sexual exploits with her new male companion, much to the mailman’s disgust before moving on to her decision to return to her old Shaolin school to challenge Ippon-ashi. She begins a training regime ripped straight out of Lau Kar-leung’s THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN, reunites with her two loyal pupils and takes on her rival in a rematch to regain her school and reputation before retiring to the apartment her body and memoirs are found in by the mailman.

SHAOLIN GRANDMA is a far-removed byproduct of Stephen Chow’s SHAOLIN SOCCER. SHAOLIN GIRL, the movie Chow produced for Japan was a spin-off of SHAOLIN SOCCER and SHAOLIN GRANDMA is a parody of that spin-off. Viewers will find little of the same entertainment value of Chow’s work in this film. Low-brow humor is awkwardly mixed with sentimentality with Chiyoko Asami, along with her age and appearance, being the catalyst for a variety of situational gags at her expense. In other words, if the thought of seeing a short and dowdy elderly woman as a stripping, kung fu-fighting sex maniac seems amusing, you might like this movie. Just don’t expect the action to be any good.

Chiyoko Asami is your typical 67-year-old woman, aside from being a star in this movie, and has no martial arts chops. She is unsurprisingly doubled heavily during the very few action sequences that take place in the movie. Her main opponent is played by Nao Nagasawa, a pop singer and model who does some of her own kicking on the level of CHARLIE’S ANGELS. With SHAOLIN SOCCER and SHAOLIN GIRL as references, the action relies on cheap effects work, wirework and sight gags like a qi-powered strike causing an opponent’s clothing to fly off. This is obviously a low-budget movie with lesser action choreographers involved so there is nothing particularly impressive to see in the action set pieces, nor are the comedic elements original or funny.

Production standards for SHAOLIN GRANDMA are on the level of a typical digital video production from Japan, meaning it’s good enough for its intended audience but doesn’t hold up well for an action comedy in the overseas market. The film has already been picked up for distribution in the U.S. but I don’t see it garnering much interest since the movie it directly parodies, SHAOLIN GIRL, has not been released Stateside and as stated before, the humor is targeted to local audiences. With little action of any quality and only a couple mildly crude jokes worthy of a weak chuckle, SHAOLIN GRANDMA is a movie I cannot recommend. If sex gags and over-the-hill humor is your bag, you’ll be better served by watching some BENNY HILL re-runs instead.