A good, not great, comedy

Rating: 6/10 (2 September 2007)

I'll start off by saying that I'm in my early 30s, Chinese-American, and played quite a bit of ping pong in my youth. Now on to the movie.
I remember the first time I watched competitive ping pong in the Olympics and was amazed by the skills displayed, especially at the speed and accuracy of the players. This movie captures that, and then takes it to the best levels of spoofing and parody. Any scenes featuring ping pong balls are very amusing in the effects and performance. Sprinkle in some amusing dialog, and some physical comedy, and you'd probably have a very good movie.
However, that isn't the whole movie. While not spoiling it too much for people, the plot draws heavily from Enter The Dragon and any scenes resembling dialog from Star Wars should probably have hit the cutting room floor.
The cast was a good collection of characters, including Christopher Walken who plays the bizarre characters to the hilt. James Hong plays his stereotypical role well as always, and Dan Fogler was quite good reminding me of the late Chris Farley in many ways. Maggie Q and Aisha Tyler are hot on screen and look for cameos by Heroes' Masi Oka and comedian Patton Oswalt. George Lopez was okay, and I'm still trying to figure out how low Jason Scott Lee's career has gotten for his role in this movie.
Not a side splitting comedy by any means but provided enough laughs despite higher expectations. It's not as good as Dodgeball or Shaolin Soccer as a comedy, so I'd recommend waiting for rental or cable unless you identify with ping pong in some way. So I give it a 6/10.