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Overall Rating
 Awesome: 29.45%
Worth A Look: 52.05%
Average: 10.27%
Pretty Bad: 2.05%
Total Crap: 6.16%
9 reviews, 92 user ratings
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| Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story |
by Erik Childress
"GO BALLS DEEP!"
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Dodgeball is the living, breathing example of the anti-Todd Phillips. You’ve heard me talk about him. He’s the righteously untalented filmmaker responsible for Road Trip, Old School and Starsky & Hutch; all hits, all comic crap. Beyond his ability to maintain a sensible laugh quotient for 90 minutes, his most egregious crime is to waste the talents of modern comic masters like Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller. Anyone who have seen their short skits together as the MTV Hollywood pitchmen realize that all you need is a room and a rolling camera and they will provide the rest. Director Rawson Marshall Thurber understands that and it’s a large part of why Dodgeball is so damn funny.Why its taken so long for a movie to use everyone’s favorite (or most feared) childhood gym game as plot fodder is amazing. Years of America’s Funniest Home Videos has proven for years that people getting hit in the nuts is funny, so why not people getting hit in the face…and the body…and the nuts?
Vaughn plays Peter La Fleur, the Sam Malone of a gym known as Average Joe’s that is frequented by the same collection of typical outcasts who have found solace in its ancientness. Right across the street is the local GloboGym, the franchise mastermind of White Goodman (Stiller) who wants to put up a parking lot where the financially challenged Joe’s stands. How else can a ragtag group of misfits raise $50,000? By entering the Dodgeball championship of course! Duh!
If you’re already questioning the validity of Dodgeball’s hokum reality, normally I’d say this isn’t the film for you. However, there’s an interesting middle ground that keeps the material somewhere between satire and sitcom; BASEketball and Brady Bunch. One suspects there probably wasn’t much in the original treatment of the film, only to spring to life once Vaughn and Stiller go off on a barrage of non-sequiturs and inspired improve while a supporting cast of brilliant comic actors add the needed toppings.
It’s nearly impossible to watch Vaughn in Dodgeball and not be reminded of the early days of Bill Murray. Channeling him or not, I can’t think of a higher praise for Vaughn who in his everyman element plays the guy with the most common sense in the room and never passes up an opportunity to comment on everyone and everything going on around him. His flirtatious scenes with (also terrific) Christine Taylor alone will resurface happy memories of the Murray from Meatballs, Stripes and Ghostbusters. Vaughn can easily add this to the list of his best comic performances alongside Swingers and Made.
Of course, yangin’ to Vaughn’s yin is Stiller who loves to turn it up when lashing out as a ridiculous villain. Few can play egotistical stupidity the way he does and Stiller reminds us of why he’s one of the truest comic talents working today in ways that Along Came Polly, Starsky & Hutch and Envy almost made us forget.
Backing these two up are a collection of performers that should be invited to every comedic party. Stephen Root (Office Space) is the henpecked husband who hatches the plan. Jason Bateman (TV’s Arrested Development) and the fabulous Gary Cole (The Brady Bunch films, Office Space) play the ESPN 8 (“The Ocho”) announcers with enough straight-faced hilarity to match them with Fred Willard in Best In Show and the dubbed cohorts of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. Alan Tudyk gets one of the more surreal characters choices as Steve the Pirate whose name pretty much says it all. Last but certainly not least is the great Justin Long (my main man Warren P. Cheswick from TV’s lost gem, Ed) who shows how comic timing can really sell a cheap wrench-in-the-face gag. Perhaps the funniest bit though is courtesy of what has to be the best cameo of the year. Don’t worry, no spoilers here and its just one of many great ones.The Dodgeball matches are fun without getting terribly exciting. The average match seems to last under three minutes and the network coverage probably lasts just a bit longer than a Lakers/Pistons series. Wokka! What the film isn’t short on is laughs and it has all the checkmarks of a classic in the making. It moves with breakneck speed and never quits on delivering a couple laughs in every scene. Thurber (who also helmed the classic Terry Tate: Office Linebacker commercials) making his feature debut handles everything with equal aplomb, even if his job was merely to say “Action!” When you’ve got Vaughn and Stiller in their element, it’s the only word a director needs in his vocabulary.
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=10085&reviewer=198
originally posted: 06/18/04 13:59:32
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USA
18-Jun-2004 (PG-13)
DVD: 02-Aug-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
09-Sep-2004
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