Product: Dodgeball/Borat Bonus Preview Disc (2004)
Rating: 5.0
Gleefully turning the sports movie on its ear.
When charismatic,lovable loser Peter La Fleur(Vince Vaughn)is in danger of losing "Average Joe's",his failing gymnasium to rival gym owner and self-absorbed fitness guru White Goodman(Ben Stiller),he and his ragtag bunch of loyal members rally together to raise the money to save it by competing in an national dodgeball tournament,despite their questionable athletic skills.Help arrives in the unlikely form of a former dodgeball champion,the abrasive and now-wheelchair-bound Patches O'Houlihan(Rip Torn).First-time director Rawson Marshall Thurber gives us a very entertaining comedy,viciously feeding off the many well-worn cliches' of the sports movie,delving very close to parody but wisely avoiding the paths taken by so many Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker wannabes.Much of the humor is scatalogical,but the biggest laughs come from this film's treatment of dodgeball,a sport usually associated with the schoolyard,with the same sort of bombastic narrative and bloated cinematic importance usually reserved for movies about baseball,football,boxing and so on.