Wong As 'Hong' A Surprise In This Pong Farce

Rating: 8/10 (22 December 2007)

If you like ping pong, laugh at the insane characters Christopher Walken likes to play, enjoy dark comedy, don't mind a bunch of stupid-but-funny scenes and a wildly outlandish story....you should like this movie. I did, and I realize it is a dumb movie....but it's fun and it's entertaining.
In many respects, this is a typical farcical comedy of today, with the same ingredients you see in many of them - the same type of outrageous characters (everyone in here), the typical spy story and Nazi villain (will Hollywood move on, in that regard?), tons of sexual innuendos and scantily-clad babes, an ugly-and fat-male lead and total absurd humor. It's the latter that I like, and I can't recall how many times I laughed out loud at some ridiculous sight or sentence that I saw in here.
Walken, even though he doesn't play the lead guy is fascinating, as always in his typical off- the-wall role. To me, though, James Hong, an actor in his late '70s, just about stole this film as "Master Wong," the blind instructor. He was flat-out hilarious and had a lot of great lines. Of course, so did Walken and the film's star, Dan Fogler ("Randy Daytona"). and the villain Thomas Lennon as "Karl Wolfschtagg." Kudos to Lennon for also co-writing the script.
Other reviewers here who wrote "silly but entertaining" hit it right on the nose. That's what it is, and that's what you should expect. Humor-wise, it is another "Dodgeball," except now it's ping-pong, and it's funnier.
In addition, you get profound words to live by, such as "To die like a tiger is better than living like a pussy." Hmmmm.