Amusing distraction but nothing more

Rating: Null/10 (4 August 2008)

Nineteen years ago, Randy Daytona was the golden boy of the US Olympic team in Seoul. A child prodigy, he is a sure thing for the gold medal in the event of table-tennis. Unfortunately, Randy chokes and his father is murdered to make up for the significant financial losses that this meant for him and cruel gangster Feng. Nowadays the lasting shame of this has seen him trading his skills at matinée lunch variety shows to uncaring audiences. This might change though as the FBI need him to infiltrate the high-stakes and totally secret ping-pong tournament organised by none other than Feng himself. The chance to avenge his father is too great to turn down, but can Randy overcome his fear of failure and his rusty abilities? Another sport, another film with the humour of Dodgeball, Beerfest, Semi-Pro and so on  indeed so familiar is Balls of Fury that it needs to do very little to introduce itself since you pretty much know what you're getting into. In terms of the genre (for this is almost populated enough to be called a "genre") the film is not anything special but it does just about do enough to be an amusing distraction. The plot is straightforward and is used to produce the usual comedy but without as many laughs as I expected. There are some really funny and clever moments but they are in the minority and mostly the film concentrates on moving the plot forward with a generally amusing air.
The casting has lots of familiar faces and generally everyone does well. I've not really seen Fogler in much else but on the evidence of this he is reasonably suited to the "comedy big man" role but not much else. Lopez and Hong support him solidly enough, while Maggie Q does what she does best  look thin and pretty. The rest of the cast features a surprising amount of faces  few of whom have a great deal to do. Walken could have done more with better material to play up on his type-casting but at times he does look a little pained. Patrick, Crews, Lee and Bader are tiny additions who don't add more than a few laughs each  special mention to Tyler though, who does the "stunning Amazonian" thing and makes it look easy, again a shame that the film doesn't give her more to do with it.
Balls of Fury is not a great film by any means. Even by the standards of its genre it is only an amusing distracting  which will do for some but for the majority of viewers will be able to find funnier films based on essentially the same ideas.