Filmgasm.com's Balls of Fury Review

Rating: 5/10 (8 September 2007)

By: Matt Shapiro Balls of Fury does all anyone expects it to do - it entertains. It takes a story that knows it's silly, throws in a lot of humor, has some unneeded but still cool action, a few ping pong battles, and entertains its viewer. But there's no way I could give it a positive grade. Not only is it an incredibly stupid (however purposeful that is) movie, but aside from Christopher Walken (who has a blast playing his part) and partially Dan Fogel (who seems a lot like a slightly less funny Jack Black), none of the performances in this film are at all convincing, as they are all stereotypical portrayal of either Asians, Hispanics, or black people.
The set-up is fine enough; an 11 year-old ping pong master named Randy Daytona competes in the Olympics against a German, and just before the game he discovers that his father bet an incredible amount of money on his son's win. Nervous for what will happen if he loses, Randy screws up and loses the game. His father bet an unpayable amount of money, so after losing, his life is taken from him by a man known as Feng. Nineteen years after losing this game, Daytona's life is in ruins; he has no job, he's quite overweight, and he doesn't have any friends. This much of the story works well.
However, the story that follows (aka the main plot of the movie) is highly unrealistic and takes some huge leaps to keep the pace nice and brisk (this was done to keep the film concise at 90 minutes). The action sequences, while entertaining, are far too unrealistic and out of touch with the rest of the story; the only cool "action" was the stuff portrayed via ping pong table. And the small romantic element of the movie was highly unneeded (and highly unrealistic; someone as gorgeous as Maggie Q would not fall for a super low-life like Dan Fogel, especially since she grew up hating white people).
If you are at all a fan of the frat pack comedies, or just dumb comedies in general, you'll surely enjoy this film to a certain extent. It provides a lot of solid one-liners and some well-done (although over-the-top) physical humor. As a movie, though, its plot is a mess, its acting outside two characters is very weak, its script falters whenever it tries to get serious, and the ending is a little too oh-come-on for it's own good.