Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

With home video shows it quickly becomes apparent that the funniest clips always involve a man getting hit in the crotch.

The male half of the cinema audience will be left squirming in their seats, crossing their legs or cupping their testicles in an effort to cope with the discomfort and hilarity of what ensues on screen in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. The latest Vince Vaughan and Ben Stiller comedy is taking the world by storm and in the wake of the Olympics its fans are now calling for the sport's inclusion in time for Beijing 2008. Whether you've played the sport or not, the rules are simple: the aim of the game is to hit your opponent with a ball to eliminate them whilst trying to avoid any objects hurtling towards you. So get ready to grab life by the ball and let's go through all the highs and lows of the movie.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story sees a merry bunch of misfits enter a dodgeball competition in a bid to win the fifty thousand dollar prize money and save their gym in the process. Vince Vaughan plays Peter LaFleur, the owner of Average Joes, is a loveable loser packed full of Homer Simpson's 'Kids you tried your best and failed miserably. The lesson is, never try' attitude. Across the from LaFleur's gym lies Globo Gym which is home to his arch nemesis, White Goodman (Ben Stiller). While the ethos of Average Joes may be to have fun and enjoy yourself, the competition are all about shedding pounds and they'll go to any length to trim your waist. When the bank forecloses on LaFleur's gym, Peter and his unlikely band of sporting heroes go into training and learn the five rules of dodgeball (dodge, duck, dip, dive and... dodge) from the legendary Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn). Will our heroes save the day and win the cash? Does White Goodman strike an uncanny resemblance to one of The Village People? Will someone tell Steve the Pirate that he is, in fact, not a pirate? Well sports fans you'll have to tune into ESPN 8, home of oddball sports, or take a trip to your local cinema to find out.

As a comedy this film is quite crude but just as I alluded to the home video shows beforehand, it turns out watching someone get hit in the balls is quite amusing. Straight away it is worth pointing out that if you don't like moronic physical comedy a la Jim Carrey then Dodgeball isn't the movie for you; even though you could be a huge Vince Vaughan fan, he isn't worth paying the admission fee to watch the film for. Everyone else can rest assured because with lines like 'If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball' or 'If you can dodge traffic, you can dodge a ball', you just know that there's going to be lots of bumps and bruises in this one. Growing up I wasn't the most coordinated of athletes, in fact it was a bit of a running joke that I couldn't catch a ball to save my life. So any time I watched Justin Long on screen I was in fits of laughter because his character (the aptly named Justin) would just keep getting pummelled with balls as he tried to grab them. Some of the shots were hilarious as his character would get hit with the same ball twice, am I wrong to say that watching someone get hit in the knee with a ball and then seeing it fly up into his face is funny? Well if I'm wrong, I don't want to be right!

Slapstick humour aside Dodgeball turns out to be quite a disappointing movie at times. LaFleur's goofy bunch of clowns are quite uninspiring, they're nowhere near the bunch of misfits from Old School. With the exception of seeing Justin getting taken out from a variety of angles, I couldn't have cared less whether the gym had been kept open for this bunch of losers. Take Steve the pirate for example, the audience is presented with a character who believes he is a pirate and walks and talks like one accordingly. Any time he appears he'll either talk about his lost treasure or say 'Argh' like Long John Silver... believe me the joke goes down like a lead balloon.

Some may argue 'hey if you're going to laugh at a guy getting hit in the testicles with a ball, then you're probably going to laugh at a guy that thinks he's a pirate', but they're wrong. In respect to the physical comedy it proves to be quite inventive, some scenes look like they must have taken hundreds of shots in order to get the funniest takes. However all the time they spent shooting these sequences seems to have taken away from the time they spent writing the script because the dialogue is woeful at points and the storyline is so cheesy, it's damn near cheddar. Thankfully there are moments of respite from Ben Stiller and Rip Torn whose obnoxious characters bring Dodgeball back on track and whip up some witty interchanges between the film's characters.

The biggest disappointment for me about Dodgeball was Vince Vaughan, I was quite shocked actually to see how bland he could be compared to his previous performances in Starsky and Hutch and Old School. I put it down to the fact that his other roles are often much gritty characters, even in Old School he comes across as quite uncaring despite being one of the good guys. The person who really came to mind after watching his performance in this movie was Homer Simpson, but let's face it when you try to live up to the king you're doomed to failure. This is why I brought up the 'Kids you tried your best and failed miserably. The lesson is, never try' quote from the Simpsons, but you'll be surprised to hear the Dodgeball has a line so similar in it that it could be deemed plagiarism. Vaughan has a wonderfully dry wit and is brimming full of sarcasm but unfortunately he is shown up by some of his co-stars; Rip Torn, for one, steals every scene he appears in. As Patches O'Houlihan, Torn is the foul mouthed coach of the Average Joes team and he's got a vocabulary so dirty that he'd make someone with Tourette's syndrome blush. No matter what he says, Patches always seems to offend and even though I laughed at everything he said, I'm definitely going to hell after quoting him on a few occasions.

If you're slightly disappointed after hearing about Vaughan's poor performance then perk up folks because the hardest working man in Hollywood, Ben Stiller, is here to save the day. By my count he's appeared in at least four movies this year and has another couple lined up for 2005 also. The best thing about his role in Dodgeball is that Stiller hangs up his good guy boots for a little bit and gets down and dirty as White Goodman. There are so many words to describe Goodman: sleazy, perverted, sadomachistic... if I kept going I'd fill up the page with ease. Every time he appears on screen one cannot help but feel uncomfortable, he's the fitness instructor gone mad and seems to fulfil every suspicion we have of people in great shape. Stiller uses his character to poke fun at America's obsession with weight, ridiculing the lengths people will go to in order to shed a few pounds and mocking the horrible attitude some of these muscle bound freaks have. It's his performance in this movie that transforms Dodgeball from slapstick humour into a feel good flick and hopefully it will have lightened up a few people's day in the process.

The resounding failure of the film is a terrible storyline which is just so over the top at times that you'll be left reaching for your sick bag as it comes crashing back to earth again like a rollercoaster. Thankfully Dodgeball has a few aces up its sleeve in the form of Rip Torn and Ben Stiller who definitely make the film worth seeing, otherwise though you're going to be left waiting for the crotch shots for a few laughs. Like I said before if slapstick humour is your thing then you're in for a treat with this movie, Dodgeball probably has the highest incidence of men being hit with objects in some very uncomfortable places ever.

Piaras Kelly
Editor, Kikizo Movies