Product: Dodgeball/Borat Bonus Preview Disc (2004)
Rating: 3.0
Funny...at times.
I think when you walk into a movie theater to see a Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn comedy about professional dodge ball, expectations should probably be lowered. Odds are you all ready know the plot, a big business gym run by the ego maniac Stiller wants to take over the run down gym next door. A gym run by goofy, but nice salt of the earth kind of guys. You know there's a good chance that they'll be a love interest and she comes in the form of Christine Taylor, a cute but no nonsense banker who's indirectly helping Stiller foreclose on the goofy guy's gym. Vaughn, owner of said gym, needs $50,000 to stay solvent and keep his place but there's no way he can get that kind of...oh...but wait a minute... he and his employees could enter the local dodge ball tournament which eventually leads to Las Vegas and, you guessed it, a $50,000 grand prize. It's the perfect plan, but, oh no, Stiller and his thugs have entered the tournament too and the Average Joe's (the name of Vaughn's team) may be in trouble. Odds are you can guess how it ends.So we don't see these movies for the plots, we go to them for the jokes and Dodgeball has its share of funny and even laugh out load moments. Stiller's over the top performance is typical Stiller, but he's one of the few comic actors today that can pull off such a performance with out looking silly. Vaughn pretty much recreates his role from "Old School" while supporting roles and guest appearances by Rip Torn, Gary Cole, Hank Azaria, and Jason Bateman keep the action moving.My first problem with the film is that it takes some wrong comic turns. Alan Tudyk seems wasted as a guy who thinks he's a pirate, that's the joke...he thinks he's a pirate. When the team HAS to ware leather bondage uniforms for their first Las Vegas match, Joel Moore wears a gag bar in his mouth. Why? No real reason except it's suppose to look funny. There's also lots of "ball" (i.e. testicle) jokes, because testicle and ball mean the same thing and that's funny. The second problem is that this movie rips off its idea and look from the very underrated BASEketball. Where Trey Parker and Matt Stone grossed out their audience perhaps a bit too much BASEketball, the idea was original and sound. It also seemed a lot funnier the first time around.