Dodgeball pokes satirical fun at the tried and true sport underdog film, but ultimately comes up a bit of an underdog itself.

Rating: Null/10 (8 December 2004)

Vince Vaughn, plays a benevolent easy going gym owner (Peter La Fleur) who's nemesis, played by Ben Stiller (White Goodman) is a calculating and miscreant gym owner, who through his own brand of tough-love discipline and underhanded business practices has allowed his gym to sky rocket while Peter La Fleur's (Vaughn) easy going nice attitude has pushed his under. In order to win money to save his gym from foreclosure and eventual repurchase by Stiller, Vaughn takes a band of rag-tag misfits who call his gym home and along with Patches O'Houlihan (Played by Rip Torn) whips them into champions.
On the positive side, this movie had a lot of subtle and not so subtle jabs, with many different types of humor, slap-stick, gag and other types strewn into the piece. However where this virtual cavalcade of comedy falls a bit short and only results in a bit of comedic overload, spreading a potentially good concept for a film a bit thin.
First off the main conflict is one essentially where, a harder working businessman outwitted a slacker, who for some reason has a business and doesn't collect any money from his clients. For all intensive purposes this conflict is understandable and that's when I asked myself why should I feel sorry for these guys?
The characters are not very well developed, Ben Stiller's character (White), is a miscreant tyrant and Stiller brings a lot to this character. I however found him very similar in his stupidity to Zoolander, but with similar endearingness of that character. I didn't feel much of a connection with any of the other antagonists however. I found that they were not developed, even to comedy movie standard. For instance one of the main gym (rejects) is a pirate, a mild-mannered loser, while another just a simpleton. All these characters in turn are not given as much dimension as they could have, leaving out connection with them tenuous are best.
Like the main conflict and the main characters much of this movie is based on comedic stereotypes which work well in certain circumstances and not so well in others. As mentioned previously one of the main comedic short comings is the inundation of copious amounts of comedic events that come up a bit short.
As far as Beb Stiller movies go, this one is certainly not on part with Zoolander, which is a better buy if you haven't seen it. Although not bad it wasn't all that great.
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