A great companion to BASEketball!!!

Rating: Null/10 (27 June 2004)

Dodgeball is a great sports comedy. If you can call dodgeball a sport. When you make a movie about the big spectator sports like baseball and football, there's only so far you can go because you have to stay withing the widely recognized rules of the game. When you have something like dodgeball you can go hog wild, because the event itself is already so over the top. Vince Vaughn is great as the too-nice-for-his-own-good owner of a small time gym that is, unfortunately, located directly across the street from Ben Stiller's Globe Gym wannabe. In an effort to save his business, he signs himself, and some of his regulars up in a dodgeball tournament to win enough money to get out of debt. Well Stiller's character will have none of that, and signs up his own team to stop them. There you go. That's the plot. It's as deep as a mouse's grave. The movie lives on the charm of it's two leads. Fortunately, Vaughn and Stiller are more than up to the challenge. Vaughn plays it relatively straight, but sneaking in the snide one liners with a smoothness that would make the like of Bill Murray and Chevy Chase proud. Stiller gives a severely over the top performance that perfectly fits the over the top character. If I had to say something negative about his performance, it's only that it's basically the same performance he gave as the demented, fitness crazed leader of a fat kids camp in the Dusney movie "Heavyweights". But he was so good there, I liked seeing a revisit of that character. Rip Torn is great as the old time dodgeball player whose coaching style will have you doubled over laughing. Chritine Taylor doesn't have much to do but look hot. But she's DAMN good at it. You are one lucky man Ben Stiller. Then there are the dodgeball games themselves. There are more than enough vicious hits, beanings, and low blows to have the audiences rolling in pain and laughter. Is it low brow humor? Of course. So when it comes on DVD, get your buddies together, get the chips, tap the keg, and set down with a double feature of this and BASEketball, and have a great old time.