Virtually every sport has been given some type of movie over the years. Football, baseball, horse racing, pool, even dodgeball, and with some many different categories in the world of sports being covered, I think that audiences are probably tired of seeing the same thing over and over again. There are however sports that have gone unnoticed by Hollywood, at least until now, and that brings us to the world of table tennis. Okay, you might know it better as ping pong.

Balls of Fury attempts to do for the underrated sport of table tennis, I mean ping pong, what Dodgeball did for . . . well, dodgeball. Back in the 1988 Olympics, young, 12-year-old hopeful Randy Daytona (Brett DelBuono) has Olympic gold in his eyes, but his final match with German national Karl Wolfschtagg (Thomas Lennon) ends with Randy being humiliated and his father murdered by members of the Japanese triad. Nearly two decades later, Randy (Dan Fogler) is working in a casino in Reno, but soon is fired, but fate has given him a new path.

Agent Rodriguez (George Lopez) from the FBI needs his help to take down Feng (Christopher Walken), a member of the Triad, but the only chance to getting close to him is through a secret ping pong tournament that Feng holds and invites only the best. Randy soon finds himself under the tutorage of the blind ping pong master Wong (James Hong), and his niece Maggie (Maggie Q.) After proving that he has the skills, Randy finds himself invited to the tournament and once again face-to-face with the man who humiliated him in the 1988 Olympics.

Being a fan of comedies that for some are an acquired taste like Dodgeball and Grandma’s Boy, I really had some rather high expectations. The trailers did look like it would be along the same lines of the aforementioned films, but that sadly isn’t the case. Balls of Fury does have a few humorous moments, but not nearly to the same caliber. I cant fault the film for lack of trying, but perhaps at times, it tries a little too hard.

Many of the jokes found in the movie are rather predictable, the type that as the set up begins, you already know what the outcome is well before it happens. This kind of surprises me considering that Balls of Fury comes from the minds of Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, the very same names behind Reno 911 which I tend to find hilarious simply because of the ridiculous nature of the series. Balls of Fury however doesn’t really have the same level of comedy. The movie often tries to put in comedy using stereotypes, like Wong being the standard blind master who can teach anyone, or Maggie as the woman who hates the newcomer, and in particularly in this case because he’s white, but then ends up falling in love with him. Actually, we find that Maggie seems to fall in love with Randy for absolutely no reason at all, and that does make it a bit funny, but not as much as you might think.

Even a brief appearance by Diedrich Bader as one of Feng’s courtesan’s doesn’t really help matters. Walken really feels like he was the wrong choice, though comedy is never really something that one thinks of when it comes to the actor, even though e did do some appearances on SNL. One of the key moments of the film, at least one that I thought would be hilarious, is Randy’s attempt to beat The Dragon, a master of ping pong, r rather mistress. We all saw the trailers with Randy facing a young girl, and while there was a great deal of potential, again it simply failed in the delivery.

The only real plus to the movie I suppose is Maggie Q, and aside from her, there are plenty of other hot Asian ladies who are of age, but hotness can’t always save a movie. At least though Balls of Fury does tend to have more laughs than anything that involves the phrasing that includes any given number of writers from Scary Movie, and things like Date Movie and Epic Movie are just simply “comedies” that could be billed more successfully billed as either brain dead or retarded. The movie with tiny balls sadly was also the movie of tiny laughs, and I really had hoped for some much more.

There isn’t any shortage of bonus features however, and Balls of Fury has more of those than it does balls . . . ping pong balls. There is a collection of deleted scenes as well as an alternate ending that I actually felt was a little better in some ways. There is a making of feature as well, and you’ll learn that Balls of Fury is probably one of the only films in cinema history to feature ping pong advisors as well as every member of Def Leppard . . . sort of. You will also learn about what it’s like to be a ball wrangler on the film, and I do have to say that having a tall, blond, busty woman assume this role is funny. I mean, this woman knows balls, she knows exactly how to handle them so everyone is happy, and when it comes to ball cleaning, and she can make those things shine.

Balls of Fury isn’t horrible, but it’s certainly not great either. It’s more of a run of the mill comedy that had a lot of potential that was lost like a ball under the couch somewhere along the way. At least table tennis fans finally have a movie that blends the sport with kung fu, at least to some degree, but it’s just a shame that Balls of Fury didn’t blend in as much humor and was too busy trying to protect it’s balls along the way.

-mike-
 

Directed by: Robert Ben Garant   Written by: Robert Ben Garant & Thomas Lennon   Cast: Dan Fogler Christopher Walken George Lopez Thomas Lennon James Hong Terry Crews Aisha Tyler Maggie Q Jason Scott Lee Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa Patton Oswalt Diedrich Bader David Koechner Brandon Molale

DVD Features: Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 & French Dolby Digital 5.1 English, Spanish & French Subtitles Deleted Scenes Alternate Ending Balls Out: The Making of Balls of Fury Under the Balls: The Life of a Ball Wrangler