Product: Dodgeball/Borat Bonus Preview Disc (2004)
Rating: 4.0
90-Minute Saturday Night Live Skit Works
This film is so stupid it's funny and it knows that it's stupid and wants to be stupid. It actually goes out of its way to be over-the-top stupid, complete with a gym owner (Ben Stiller), so overwrought by a secret eating disorder, he massages pizza while surfing the Internet in his private moments of "gastroporn." He's determined to take over a smaller "loser" gym, Average Joes, run by Vince Vaughan. This comedy is a good-hearted fable about the average guy respecting himself and maintaining his integrity in the face of a culture rendered grotesque by its extreme vanity and naricissism, the embodiment of which is seen in the Ben Stiller character. I don't mean to over-intellectualize the film; I simply mean to say that the film, for all its silliness and over-the-top humor, is about something.