An absolutely horrendous movie with almost no redeeming qualities, Little Hero of Shaolin uses a multitude of young acrobatic actors to try and put together an exciting film. It fails miserably. The residents of the Shaolin temple are asked to leave and journey to visit the new Ching emperor. They leave an abbot and the children monks behind to guard the temple in their absence. Meanwhile, the surviving Ming prince is hiding out at the temple, and a Ching princess is determined to find and kill him, taking over the temple as an added bonus. At first the children are gratuitously massacred, but eventually they learn to fight back with more effective means. When the princess is eventually captured, Shaolin Temple is granted safety in return for her release.

As mentioned before, there are almost no positives for this movie. The dubbing is horrible, with all the children sounding like a demented Minnie Mouse. It's difficult to even hear what they are saying with the pitch of their voices reaching levels that are painful to endure. The plot is virtually non-existent as well; and it appears that the only reason the film was made was to showcase the acrobatic skills of the young martial artists. In this regard they are quite accomplished, but an hour and a half is too long to spend on a single aspect. Thrown into the mix is a very creepy gay assassin (Lee Jo-Wing) who literally bites the children on the neck to kill them, and a young girl dressed up like mini-Jane (re: Tarzan) who appears running around in the woods of rural China. It's all too much to take seriously and adds up to a total waste of celluloid.

2/10