Product: Dodgeball/Borat Bonus Preview Disc (2004)
Rating: 3.0
Pleasantly surprised
If not for the insistence of my roommate, I would not have watched this film. Every preview I saw for it in the theaters and on T.V. made it look absolutely ridiculous.So imagine my surprise when, about a third of the way through, I'm laughing so hard I can barely breathe. Rip Torn's portrayal of a former dodgeball champ now in a wheelchair training the highly untrainable "Average Joe's" dodgeball team absolutely stole the show. That's what Rip Torn usually does anyway. His characters always bring something to the screen and add that undefinable *something*.Vince Vaughn was believable as the lazy owner of a very less than average gym. His gym is about to be taken from him, the power in his house is about to be turned off, and he needs to raise $50,000. So they enter a Dodgeball tournament.We've seen this before. Entering tournaments to win much needed money for whatever cause has been done ad nausem. This film, with Vince Vaughn's quite complacence, Christine Taylor's solid comedic turns, it worked more than most of those old formulaic films.And while I hate to say it - and I'm sure this will garner me plenty of "not helpful" votes - Ben Stiller, as an actor, was the worst part of the film. I completely understand that as the owner of the over-the-top gym his character needed to be over-the-top as well, but it was overkill. Neither myself nor my roommate laughed at his ridiculousness. We did laugh, however, at other scenes in which Stiller wasn't involved. He just didn't fit the character.Without Stiller - or perhaps with Stiller a bit more reined in - it would have made for an even better film. Still, it was good enough, in its own way, to earn a three star review.