I have never laughed so hard in a movie theater before!

Rating: Null/10 (21 June 2004)

Spoofs are what started stupid humor, back in the seventies. But as time went on, spoofs started sucking themselves, and the Dumb Movie was created. The Dumb Movie is the type of film that has loads of stupid spoof-like humor, but isn't spoofing anything in particular. Most of the time the Dumb Movie is awful, but rarely it is effective, fun and very, very funny. `Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story' is one of those times.
The plot is basically unimportant, as the film is mostly an episodic collection of slapstick humor, but I'll explain it anyway. Peter La Fleur (Vince Vaughan) owns a workout gym called `Average Joe's', which has a very small number of members, all of which are burned out losers. None of the members have paid a membership fee in quite a while, and soon lawyer Catherine Veach (Christine Taylor) is telling La Fleur that if he doesn't pay fifty thousand dollars in thirty days, the gym will be transformed into a parking lot for the much larger Globo Gym across the street, run by White Goodman (Ben Stiller).
La Fleur and the rest of the losers decide to enter a dodgeball tournament in Las Vegas, the prize money conveniently being fifty thousand dollars. Of course, there's one thing wrong: they all suck at playing dodgeball. Seeing them lose against a team of girl scouts inspires legendary player Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn) who's in his eighties and confined to a motorized wheelchair to round them up and teach them how to play.
I can't think of any other actor that could play O'Houlihan than Rip Torn. He plays it on just the right level of Over-the-Top, you know no one like this could ever exist, but he's still somehow believable. It must be his booming, raspy voice and his angry facial expressions. He's definitely one of the funniest aspects of the film.
The rest of the cast is good too. Vaughan plays his character straight: he's unenthusiastic, pessimistic, and lazy but still a nice guy and he makes a good hero for the film. The rest of the losers  including a middle aged nerd (Stephen Root), a very unconfident high schooler (Justin Long) and a guy who thinks he's a pirate (Alan Tudyk)  are all played well, they're not too crazily over the top to be unbelievable. The only actually bad performance comes from Christine Taylor, who is mostly unnecessary and rarely funny.
The film's best performance comes from Ben Stiller as White Goodman, a man so insecure he pumps up his muscles (and an inflatable crotch too), tortures himself if he even thinks about eating junk food and surrounds himself with huge muscle-bound guys to look even tougher. He doesn't realize he's insecure, though. Instead he thinks he's confident, always trying to sound smart but only succeeding in contradicting himself over and over again. The performance is flawless; it's one of 2004's best so far. If ever there were a spoof performance that was worthy of an Oscar, this would be it.
Though the film is driven by its over the top characters it's not only them that's funny. The dodgeball matches are gut-wrenching hilarity too, for some reason you manage to laugh every single time someone gets hit with something. It never gets old.
As for the plot and depth of the characters, well, this is a Dumb Film, that's not important. Director Thurber knew this, and didn't bother much with those details. He knows the plot is bad though, as is made clear when the huge trunk of money La Fleur's team win at the end is labeled in big yellow letters `Deus ex Machina', invoking laughter from the more intellectual types in the audience.
This is the best form of pure, dumb summer fun, a recommendation to all, 7/10.