'Panda's dead!'

Rating: Null/10 (5 May 2008)

Yet another in an increasingly long line of minor-interest sports films based on the same formula employed by major-interest sports films but injecting a large dose of juvenile humour. Balls of Fury adapts the plot from Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon to tell its tale of Randy Daytona, one time child table tennis contender who is reduced to using his ping-pong talents on stage in a cheesy cabaret act. As far as this type of film goes, this one isn't as bad as I'd expected. I laughed out loud on a number of occasions, which is fairly unusual - I've noticed that as you grow older you find fewer things funny, especially when it comes to Hollywood's mass-appeal comedy.
Lead actor Dan Fogler is a new face to me, and seems in danger of being something of a Jack Black clone. As of yet, though, he's far less annoying than Black, less prone to showboating, and makes quite a likable hero. Christopher Walken plays the villain of the piece, and he's pretty good; he looks like he's having fun playing the part and joins in with gusto with the determinedly childish lunacy of the plot. The film's running time is barely an hour-and-a-half, which is probably just about right; even though things are considerably less funny in the final half-hour, there's still just about enough laughs to keep things going.