Dodgeball

B

This is a movie I wasn't going to pay good money for, but was still near the top of my list for movies I wanted to rent. I feel like I got about what I expected. There is a lot of goofy humor from a very talented cast in a surprisingly clean movie (perhaps because they realized the target audience would be adolescent boys). Watching it, I felt like the film makers were able to shoot the whole movie in about the same time as it took to watch the movie, maybe a little less actually, since part of the movie is slow motion. I don't know if they could have worked on it more and made it funnier or if they needed to make it quickly to keep everything fresh.

Vince Vaughn is good as the regular guy gym owner. Jim Belushi might have done this role a few years ago and there would have been no difference. Ben Stiller plays the same stupid character he has played in so many of his other movies, which is a shame. He was good in Permanent Midnight, so I know he can act when he feels like it. But instead he makes faces and plays it over the top. Jason Bateman is just awful as a color commentator for the Dodgeball matches, proving you can't just stick him in a movie without a script and expect him to be funny.

Still, somehow the movie succeeds in spite of itself. Rip Torn is good as the former Dodgeball champ who whips the band of misfits into shape by having them dodge wrenches and traffic. In the DVD extras, they said they realized the only way to make the sport of dodgeball funny was to hit people either in the groin or in the head. People get hit in the head over and over again, and it really is pretty funny. The DVD has a hilarious extended scene of Justin Long getting smacked by dodgeballs that seems to make the point that if getting hit in the head once is funny, getting hit in the head 20 times in rapid succession is very, very funny.

This is a bad movie that is also pretty funny. Keep your expectations low and you could enjoy it. I'll give it a B.

Back to Index