Review: Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story



When hideous gym conglomerate head White Goodman (Ben Stiller, with an inflatable crotch) threatens to take over his crummy little gym “Average Joe’s”, Vince Vaughn must come up with $50,000 dollars before the bank forecloses on it. The solution? Play in a Dodgeball tournament, with Stiller and his steroid-enhanced Cobras (Joes vs. Cobras, get it?) also competing…mostly just to humiliate Vaughn’s team of misfits. These misfits include two wieners (Joel David Moore and Justin Long), an idiot who thinks he’s a pirate (Alan Tudyk), myopic Stephen Root (who essentially does his meek-but-seething shtick from “Office Space”), and ultimately the pretty Christine Taylor (AKA Mrs. Ben Stiller), a lawyer who works for Stiller’s company but frankly can’t stand the guy. Rip Torn plays legendary Dodgeball guru Patches O’Houlihan (played rather improbably as a younger man by Hank Azaria, basically doing his Moe the Bartender voice, which in no way resembles Torn’s ferocious growl) who turns up to whip these misfits into shape…by throwing wrenches at them…and having them dodge traffic. And yelling and swearing a lot. A real lot. A scarily convincing Gary Cole and incredibly loopy Jason Bateman are terrific as the ESPN 8 commentators, with Bateman’s half-stoned, mostly inane comments perhaps inspired by Dennis Miller’s stint as an NFL commentator. But what the hell does ‘The Ocho’ mean, anyway?

 

Likeable 2004 Rawson Marshall Thurber (a commercials director making his theatrical debut) comedy is one of the more consistently amusing (if not always hilarious) comedies of the mid-00s. Most of the cast is terrific (Tudyk’s character doesn’t work, though), but special mention must go to the always hilariously mean Torn who actually manages to outdo himself here in profane gruffness (Best line, albeit rather offensive: ‘It’s like watching a bunch of retards trying to fuck a doorknob!’), and Stiller, who is extraordinarily silly but very funny indeed (in a role not all that dissimilar to the duplicitous, mean-spirited fat camp guy from the underrated “Heavyweights”). The cameos are mostly pretty funny too. The screenplay is by the debutant writer-director, who gets credit for literally labelling his deus ex machina.

 

Rating: B-

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