Patchy effort lit up by show-stealing Rip Torn - 65%

Rating: 6/10 (19 May 2006)

I always felt that this was one of those films that looked funny in the trailers but was actually a load of rubbish. Sport-based films tend to follow a very strict plot line and structure and this is their fatal flaw - an actual game where the underdogs win is genuinely exciting whereas the opposite is true if shown in movies. Increasingly, sport movies rely on comedy to help them through and "Dodgeball" is yet another of these tactless, in-yer-face comedies that are about as PC as Bernard Manning at a Women's Institute meeting. But sadly, it isn't as funny as it wants to be and is saved from total ignorance by a blistering performance from a veteran actor in a supporting role.
Vince Vaughn plays Peter La Fleur, a regular everyman running a dilapidated gym called Average Joes opposite the corporate mega-structure of White Goodman's (Ben Stiller) Globo Gym. When Globo Gym threaten to take Average Joes over, Peter and his plucky group of losers find themselves entering a dodgeball competition in order to secure the prize money needed to keep them in business. But ego-maniacal fitness freak White is determined to get his way and enters his own team in the tournament. And given that both guys are chasing corporate lawyer Kate (Stiller's wife Christine Taylor), the clash is given an extra edge.
Given that this is the basic plot, you can probably see the movie's ending from here. In fact, the film very nearly falls apart midway through as it just gets sillier and sillier the longer it goes on and it's not that clever to begin with. "Dodgeball" is, at times, an idiotic incoherent mess that does nothing new or remarkable at all, despite a few glimpses of genuine laughs. So why isn't it a total failure, I hear you cry. Well, it's all down to Rip Torn's hilarious appearance as wheelchair-bound veteran dodgeball coach Patches O'Houlihan who has all the best lines, the best put-downs ("You're about as useful as a c***-flavoured lollipop") and all the best scenes. He easily steals the film and when he's not there, the film really suffers although Stiller is also good as the obnoxious Goodman.
With a tighter script and more consistent laughs, this could have been fabulous. But being kept firmly on the sports-plot railroad merely adds to the film's problems. It's daft and only sporadically funny, relying on Rip Torn to carry it through. Like "Anchorman", it can't maintain the humour right the way through and by the time the film ends, the whole thing feels cobbled together rather amateurishly. It's a great pity because Rip Torn is simply brilliant in "Dodgeball" and probably deserves his own show. But nothing else can keep up with him. Even if you're familiar with the "sport" of dodgeball (which we aren't in the UK), this film won't completely bowl you over. "Dodgeball" - you're out!