As the summer season of blockbusters finally winds down, it’s back to school with comedies and thrillers dominating movie screens until the holiday season. So, bring your balls (ping pong balls, that is) and leave your brain at home while watching the latest comedy from Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant (the writers of “Reno 911!: Miami” and “The State”), “Balls of Fury.”
Garant, directing his second feature film, doesn’t stray too far from his comedy niche, but goes for totally obvious jokes in the menacing arena of a professional ping pong. The story begins with an Olympic hopeful, a young Randy Daytona, who loses a match to German bad guy Karl Wolfschtagg (played by “Reno 911!” star and writer Lennon). Upon his disgraceful loss, Daytona’s dad is killed for betting on him to win.
Tony Award winner Dan Fogler (“School for Scoundrels”) plays the adult Randy who is now no more than bad dinner theater entertainment. The FBI sends Agent Rodriguez (George Lopez) to recruit Randy for a secret mission. Rodriguez convinces ping pong master Wong (James Hong of “Big Trouble in Little China” and “Wayne’s World 2”) to train Daytona to infiltrate a ping pong tournament sponsored by an evil Triad leader known as Feng. As it turns out, the mysterious Feng is the man responsible for the death of Daytona’s father.
The movie plays out almost as if it was a Zucker Brothers’ movie (such as “Airplane” and “Top Secret”) as the jokes are thrusted at you like the barrage of serves by some of Randy’s opponents.
While there are a lot of stupid laughs, don’t go into the theater looking for more than what is revealed in the film’s trailer. It’s ok to give in to the guilty pleasures of the dark side of comedy every once in a while.
The training Daytona receives is given by Master Wong’s niece, Maggie (the very attractive Maggie Q of “Mission: Impossible III”), who thinks of him as a useless slob and the ‘gwilo’ that he is.
This quickly changes once Daytona faces the danger of Feng’s tournamen. Soon enough, she falls utterly in love with him. A fat guy who gets with a hot chick is possible in real life- look at Kevin James, Jim Belushi and Peter Griffin. Need I say more?
Finally, the story gets to the tournament and Feng is finally revealed.
The prints and advertising clue you in ahead of time that Feng is played by Christopher “I gotta have more cowbell” Walken. Fortunately, his best punch lines are kept out of the revealing trailer. By this point, the movie gets absolutely silly, but who wouldn’t want to see even more ridiculous characters, gay courtesans (Deitrich Bader of “Office Space” and “Napoleon Dynamite”) and Walken playing a Chinese bad guy?
If the movie does end up dying in the theaters, which a lot of dumb comedies do, it will probably find a second life in the home video market the way “Office Space” and some other cult comedies have. Either way, moviegoers can always use another comedy to quote to death.
