Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

Take it from someone who can still feel the hollow rubber tang! of old dodgeball scars: It feels great to be blindsided by a little movie like this.

Ben Stiller is like a guy on the 1919 White Sox. He's rigged to lose. His comedy is the stuff of failure, and sometimes it's pleasurable watching him flit around in funny get-ups, only to have a pretty costar put him down.

Writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber (the short "Terry Tate: Office Linebacker") keeps the jokes coming fast and furious, and while none of them are deep, many find their mark.

Mostly, Dodgeball just feels off--never consistently funny, but also never dire. It's as if Thurber resigned himself to making a dumb, formula-bound movie with a dusting of smart gags instead of a smart movie in dumb-movie clothes.

Much of Dodgeball feels competent but lazy. The nerds are barely distinguishable, except for one who thinks he's a pirate and says arghh a lot to no humorous effect.

For a while, Vaughn's slobbo guy charm and Stiller's creepy Flash Gordon aesthetic are amusing, but it isn't long before Vaughn looks like a Bill Murray disciple trapped among circus freaks, and Stiller runs out of weirdo tricks.

Mean-spirited vulgarity and homosexual panic.

'Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story' is a movie that made me laugh hysterically with its slapstick, sometimes crude and strange out-of-this-world humor. It's a movie that filled me with a lot of positive feelings and a comedy that I strongly recommend. White Goodman (Ben Stiller) is an egotistical gym owner, he owns and runs a successful gymnasium called "Globo Gym" which is where business is going pretty good thanks to its high quality machinery and facilities. Over on the other side lies "Average Joe's" Gymnasium, owned by Peter LaFleur (Vince Vaughn), and is more of a run-down gym and only has few members. When Peter meets Katie Veach (Christine Taylor) and she tells him that all his bills are overdue, he then finds out that White of Globo Gym wants to buy Average Joe's leaving him in a difficult financial situation. Peter, along with his crew including; Justin (Justin Long), Gordon (Stephen Root), Steve (Alan Tudyk), Owen (Joel Moore) and Dwight (Chris Williams) must find different ways to make money in order to keep the gym. They then hear about a Dodgeball tournament in Las Vegas where there is a cash prize that they can use to keep the gym and not let White get anywhere near it. When it seems that they are not able to get the gym and their Dodgeball skills are not quite up to standards, Peter then bumps into Dodgeball legend Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn) and he teaches them, in a series of funny methods, how to play professional Dodgeball and win the Las Vegas tournament. This is a very fast-paced and wacky comedy, Ben Stiller is great at playing the annoying, egotistical and sometimes elaborate White Goodman. All of the comedy is also perfectly timed to know when it's the right time to be funny. The physical humor including seeing a number of men getting hit by Dodgeballs never gets tiring. To put it short, 'Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story' is worth your time.

I’ve got a little place in my heart for empty-brained screwball comedies. The kind of junk cinema that doesn’t even make an effort to say something with its storytelling (or really to do anything more than back up its one-word title) and, instead, invests that energy into the pursuit of dumber, louder and wackier punchlines. Dodgeball fits that description to a tee, and while it’s been quite some time since my last viewing - maybe even since it was still in theaters - I still knew exactly what to expect. It’s actually, somehow, both better and worse than I remembered. This is a Jekyll and Hyde story behind the cameras: raw, unrestrained comedy paired with a fussy, hand-holdy style of editing. The laughs are there, but the production is just so damn hokey; I can almost hear the rimshots and slide flutes every time something funny happens. The execs who made these decisions are the same breed who thought TV audiences would be scared and confused without a canned audio track to show them where it’s okay to laugh. You’re not adding, guys, you’re actively detracting! Fortunately, Ben Stiller is here in über-character mode, Rip Torn is here to spit ridiculous phrases with a straight face, Milford from Office Space is here to be Milford from Office Space in a gym setting and there’s a bottomless assortment of near-celebrity cameos to fill in all the gaps. It also might just be the single most meme’d movie ever made. From “if you can dodge a wrench” to “it’s a bold strategy, Cotton,” Chuck Norris to ESPN8, the hits just don’t stop coming. Like I said, it’d been a while, so I was floored by just how thoroughly Dodgeball has permeated online culture. And it should be noted that, even when you know they’re coming, even when you’ve seen them a hundred times before, the high-water laughs still deliver. That’s not to say there are no low-water spots, of course. Not every riff works. It would be generous to say this bats .500. Not every player lights up the screen like Stiller’s one-note gymbro maestro. It’s not easy to be the straight man, but Vince Vaughn looks completely bored with his leading role. At the end of the day, this is just what it looked like: a dumb movie with weaknesses a’plenty and a plot thinner than a can of Campbell’s. The peaks are steep, but the valleys are well below sea level.

A predictable plot, but a star-studded cast with writers that never fail to make you laugh. An easy and funny watch!

Really good comedy, but not good at a lot of other stuff. It’s okay but not great.

This movie reactivated my childhood trauma of getting picked last in PE and getting slammed by a dodgeball. TRAUMATIC MOVIE.