Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story is a 2004 American sports comedy film written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber and starring Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller. The plot follows a group of misfits entering a Las Vegas dodgeball tournament to save their cherished local gym from the onslaught of a corporate health fitness chain. The film was theatrically released by 20th Century Fox on June 18, 2004. It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $168.4 million on a $20 million budget. Plot. Peter LaFleur owns Average Joe's, a small, dilapidated  gym with only a few members. When he defaults on the gym's mortgage, the cocky White Goodman, who owns Globo Gym across the street, plans to foreclose on Average Joe's and demolish it to build a new auxiliary parking structure for his members unless Peter can raise $50,000 in 30 days to purchase it. Goodman attempts to seduce attorney Katherine "Kate" Veatch, who is handling his account; repulsed, she cites conflict of interest (COI) to rebuff his disturbing advances, telling him she does not date clients. Peter, gym employees Dwight Baumgarten and Owen Dittman and members Steve  Pirate Cowan, Justin Redman, and Gordon Pibb all band together to raise the required money. After a car wash suggested by Owen fails, Gordon suggests entering a dodgeball tournament in Las Vegas with a $50,000 prize. After the team watches a 1950s-era training video obtained by Justin featuring Irish-American dodgeball legend Patches O'Houlihan, Girl Scout Troop 417 easily defeats them in a local qualifying match, but are disqualified due to one member's use of three separate types of anabolic steroids and a low-grade beaver tranquilizer, effectively handing the win to Average Joe's by default . Having spied on Average Joe's using a hidden camera, Goodman forms his own team. Gordon is surprised but White reveals that his friendship with the chancellor enabled him to join the tournament. After watching their confrontation, Patches, now a wheelchair-bound aging man, approaches Peter, volunteering to coach the team. Patches' unusual training regimen includes throwing wrenches at the team, forcing them to dodge oncoming cars, and constantly insulting them. Kate demonstrates skill at the sport but declines to join the team, citing COI. Goodman shows up at Kate's house uninvited and announces that he lied to her  bosses that she was drinking on the job, thus getting her fired from her law firm so that he can date her. Enraged, but now free of the COI, she rejects Goodman and joins the Average Joe's team. At the tournament, the team suffers early setbacks but manages to advance to the final round against Globo Gym. The night before the match, Patches is killed by a falling sign in the casino. Demoralized, and anxious that the team will lose, Peter angrily tells Steve that he is not a pirate, causing Steve to leave the team. Returning to his  room, Peter encounters an uninvited Goodman, who greedily offers him $100,000 for the deed to Average Joe's. The day of the final round, Justin leaves to help his classmate Amber in a cheerleading competition, leaving Average Joe's short of players. Peter briefly encounters Lance Armstrong, who restores his morale and rejoins his team, but he and Justin return too late; Average Joe's has already forfeited the match. Gordon finds a loophole in the rules: a majority of the judges can overturn the forfeiture. Chuck Norris casts the tie-breaking vote, allowing the team to play. After  an intense game, Peter and Goodman face off in a sudden-death match to determine the winner. Inspired by Patches' spirit, Peter blindfolds himself, successfully dodges Goodman's throw and strikes him in the face, winning the championship and the prize money. To nullify the victory, Goodman reveals that Peter sold Average Joe's to him the previous night, but Peter reveals that he used Goodman's $100,000 to bet on Average Joe's to win; with the odds against them at 50 to 1, he collects $5 million. Since Globo Gym is a publicly traded company, as  Kate explains, Peter purchases a controlling interest in it, thus regaining Average Joe's, then publicly fires Goodman. Steve, now with a more normal appearance, returns and apologizes to Peter, but his pirate persona resurfaces when Peter shows him their winnings. Peter is shocked when Joyce, a girlfriend of Kate's who caught an earlier flight from Guam to witness the final match, arrives and kisses her passionately, but Kate then reveals her bisexuality and kisses Peter similarly. Kate becomes Peter's girlfriend, and Justin and Amber get married with a baby on the way, while Owen begins dating Fran  from the Globo Gym team. Peter opens youth dodgeball classes at a newly renovated Average Joe's, while Goodman slides back into obesity and depression, blaming Norris for his plight. Production. When the film was screened to test audiences, the original ending had Average Joe's lose to Globo Gym in the final match. After the ending was viewed negatively by the test audiences, the sudden death match and Average Joe's winning the dodgeball tournament were added alongside White going back to obesity. Copyright lawsuit. In 2005, two New York City screenwriters, David Price and Ashoka Thomas, filed suit  in federal court against Fox and Thurber, claiming copyright infringement of an unproduced screenplay they had written, "Dodgeball: The Movie", by Thurber and Fox. They alleged there were a number of similarities in the plots of the two screenplays, and that Thurber may have had access to their screenplay, which was finished a month before his and submitted to an agent whose assistant he was acquainted with. Lawyers for the defendants dismissed some of the allegations as coincidental. They said that both screenplays were the work of writers who used common formulaic elements. Judge Shira Scheindlin denied the defense motion  for summary judgment and ordered a jury trial. The suit was later settled out of court. Reception. Box office. In its first week, the film grossed over $29 million, and would go on to a domestic gross of $114.3 million, and a worldwide total of $167.7 million. Critical response. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale. "Slant Magazine" dismissed the film as "a less-than-one-joke film", while "TV Guide" remarked that Ben Stiller "doesn't know when to stop". Other critics, such as "The  Boston Globe", praised Stiller's satirical take on male virility and praised the chemistry between Vince Vaughn and Christine Taylor. Joe Morgenstern of "The Wall Street Journal" initially declined to review the film, believing it was not worthy of his time. However, after reviewing the DVD, he changed his view, writing, "Mea culpa, mea culpa. Rawson Marshall Thurber's debut feature, starring Ben Stiller opposite Vince Vaughn, is erratic, imbecilic if not completely idiotic, inconsequential in even the small scheme of things, and thoroughly entertaining". Roger Ebert gave the film a three stars out of four rating in his "Chicago  Sun-Times" review and writes "in a miraculous gift to the audience, 20th Century-Fox does "not" reveal all of the best gags in its trailer." Legacy. Possible sequel. On April 22, 2013, it was announced that 20th Century Fox has started developing a sequel to the film, with Clay Tarver writing the script and Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn returning to star. However Ben Stiller has since stated that he wasn't aware a "Dodgeball" sequel was happening. A reunion video featuring the cast was released online in June 2017, announcing a competition to raise funds for the Stiller  Foundation. ESPN8: The Ocho. On August 8, 2017, ESPN paid homage to its lampooned portrayal in "Dodgeball" by airing a day-long "ESPN8: The Ocho" marathon on its college sports channel ESPNU. In the spirit of the programming depicted in the film, it consisted of lesser-known and unconventional sports and competitions—including trampoline dodgeball, darts, disc golf, kabaddi, and roller derby. The stunt was reprised the following two years on ESPN2, and also included airings of "Dodgeball". Due to a lack of live sports programming during the COVID-19 pandemic, ESPN announced on March 22, 2020, it would reprise the  stunt earlier than scheduled on ESPN2. It did it on May 2, 2020, on ESPN, and then August 8, 2020 on ESPN2, as well as the Big Screen in "". A collection of sports that were featured on ESPN8, as well as the ESPN8 broadcast on these said networks, were available on the ESPN app. Home video. The DVD and Blu-ray releases all contain various outtakes and deleted scenes including an alternate ending as well as an infamous ‘Easter Egg’ in the form of a spoof director's commentary. The directors commentary track starts out in the traditional fashion with  the director and co-stars but soon adds in extra characters and descends into a largely unrelated comedy experience. Halfway through a seemingly chaotic recording, it stops and is replaced by the directors' commentary for "There's Something About Mary".