"Balls of Fury" is pathetic ping-pong porn!

Rating: 4/10 (5 September 2007)

The people that created the hilarious Comedy Central cable TV series "Reno 911" have only marginal success with their new table tennis sports movie parody "Balls of Fury" (** out of ****), about a former ping-pong prodigy past his prime who helps the FBI nab the nefarious Asian mastermind that killed his father. Sadly, despite its inventive comic premise and celebrity cast, this low-brow farce depends on bowel humor and lowest common denominator jokes for its laughs. Okay, you'll smirk a lot at what masquerades as comedy in this lean but lame 90-minute nonsense. You might even snicker at the groaners, but you'll seldom laugh out loud for long. Incidentally, the "Star Wars" epics and "Scarface" provide the inspiration for much of the uninspired dialogue. The wit in the script by "Reno 911" writers Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant is as anal as it is banal, but the PG-13 rating prevents them from stooping too low. When was the last time, for example, that you saw a character in a movie get punched or kicked in the crotch for a laugh? Worst of all, chubby newcomer Dan Fogler looks funnier than he isan obvious Jack Black wannabe with none of Black's drollery.
As "Balls of Fury" unfolds, we meet clean-cut, curly-haired Randy Daytona (Brett DelBuono of "The Casket"), a twelve-year old who wields a mean ping-pong paddle. Randy makes it to the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea, but he suffers a humiliating defeat from the paddle of his maniacal Soviet Bloc opponent Karl Wolfschtagg (Thomas Lennon of "Reno 911") and quits the game. Not only does Daytona lose the championship, but also his coach as well as father--U.S. Marine sergeant Pete Daytona (Robert Patrick of "We Are Marshall")--dies at the hands of the infamous Asian criminal, Feng (tough guy Christopher Walken of "Pulp Fiction"), because he cannot pay off his debt. Meanwhile, Feng becomes a legendary crime lord and strives to keep his identity a closely guarded secret. Nineteen years pass, and woebegone Randy grows up and out (Dan Fogler) to emerge as a lounge act in a small Reno, Nevada, casino. Randy keeps several balls at a time in the air with his paddle with expertise of a juggler. A guy with a talking cockatiel announces his act. Unfortunately, everything goes wrong for poor Randy. He solicits a volunteer from the audience to participate in a gag, and the guy drops dead from a heart attack because Randy's ping-pong balls strike him in such rapid succession.
Enter the FBI. Agent Ernie Rodriquez (George Lopez of "Real Women Have Curves") recruits Randy to assist the Bureau in their Feng investigation. They want Randy to come out of retirement and win enough games so that Feng will invite him to one of his illegal underground table tennis tournaments held once every five years. The Bureau wants to bust Feng for international arms smuggling. Despite his expertise, Randy has lost his competitive edge, so Rodriquez enlists a championship ping-pong teacher, Master Wong (James Hong of "Chinatown"), to train him. The catch is that Wong is blind. Naturally, Wong walks into fences, looks the wrong way, and takes a nasty plunge down an elevator shaft. Wong makes Randy appear foolish when Wong's slim, sexy, athletic niece Maggie (the woefully underused Maggie Q of "Live Free or Die Hard") whips him repeatedly at ping-pong. Eventually, after an initial setback against Hammer (Patton Oswalt of "Cake Boy"), a trophy licking wiseacre, Randy regains his skill and Feng invites him to his secret play-offs. The losers here get a poison dart in the neck in what Feng calls 'single-elimination, sudden death matches.' Feng tries to tempt Randy to 'go over to the dark side' and join him in his weapons smuggling operation. Feng has designed an automatic pistol made of polymer so that it doesn't trip airport alarms.
Clearly, writer/director Robert Ben Garant and co-scenarist Tomas Lennon are poking fun at the classic Bruce Lee martial arts masterpiece "Enter the Dragon" with their premise about secret ping-pong ball play-offs. The idea that a relatively harmless sport like ping-pong can be as lethal as a kung fu tournament is the source of most of the film's best humor. Some of the participants--who can spin these tiny white balls on their fingertips, crush with their fists, and slice and dice them with a hatchet--are amusing characters, too. "Balls of Fury," however, runs most of its humor into the ground as well as elsewhere. Our heroes must smuggle mini-flashlight sized tracking devices into Feng's Central American headquarters. These devices will alert their FBI back-up as to their whereabouts. Yeah, you guessed, they enter Feng's premises walking a bit off-kilter with their FBI suppositories. Another example of the lowest common denominator humor here concerns host Feng supplying his guests with exotic courtesans that turn out to be male sex slaves. When Randy tries to send muscular young Gary (Dietrich Bader of "Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous") away, Gary refuses to leave. He explains that Feng's towering bodyguard, Mahogany (Aisha Tyler of "Death Sentence"), a Grace Jones look-alike who uses a blow-pipe to launch poison darts, will kill him. Homophobic Randy spends the entire night with Gary playing a board game to keep from falling asleep.
"Balls of Fury" isn't half as funny as "Reno 911," though it does have its moments. This is Dan Fogler's first major role, and he hasn't been around long enough to establish a signature comic persona like co-stars George Lopez, Patton Oswalt, and Christopher Walken who parades around in some of the most outrageous outfits this side of Elton John and Elvis Presley. Altogether, "Balls of Fury" lacks both the balls and the fury to be the side-splitting sensation that it sought to be.