This is what you should expect in a dumb comedy

Rating: Null/10 (29 June 2004)

I love hilarious and gut busting movies. Unfortunately I did not think this movie fit either of those categories. Do not get my wrong, I usually enjoy Ben Stiller's comedy but this movie did not work for me. I thought I would be laughing uproariously but in fact for the first part of the movie I might have chortled at the most!
Ben Stiller does a fairly decent job as the megalomaniacal Globo-Gym owner, I especially enjoyed his over the top statements in which he would finish by saying, " I'm just kidding....no I'm not". That was pretty funny but the rest of the movie was pretty stale. Vince Vaugn is also a fairly good foil to Stiller's over the top performance. The cast of 'average joe's' are just that, average and uninteresting. The wannabe pirate guy was just annoying to say the least.

The plot bothered me the most because the script writers put absolutely no effort into writing this story. I would not have minded as much if there was a tongue in cheek, sort of "wink, wink" to the audience but I did not really see that. The plot is just a narrow sort of progression to the final dodge ball tournament but nothing really interesting happens in between. I guess the funniest part of the movie was people getting hit in the crotch and head with dodge balls. I must note that while I was not laughing at several parts of the film, other people were; maybe I was missing something. Overall I would give this film an average grade of: ** out of *****