Balls of Fury
BY Ryan LaMarca / 2008-03-15
I remembering having one of those activity table sets that served as a pool table, an air hockey table, and a table tennis court. I've never ever been good at ping-pong, and I probably never will be. Although I don't have the actual ping-pong table anymore, I do enjoy a bit of virtual table tennis courtesy of the Nintendo Wii (where, by the way, I have actually gotten pretty good). Anyway, it seems to me that modern comedies are getting worse and worse every year. Most comedies these days are absolute garbage, as the case has been recently with movies like "Norbit," "Meet the Spartans," and "Blades of Glory." Now take a look at a film like "Balls of Fury" which looks, in its own right, retarded. It appears to be just another stupid, dumb fake sports movie with a lot of sex humor…and that’s exactly what it is. But you know what, I really didn't find this one as annoying and offensive as the others, and I kind of liked it.
The entire premise is so far fetched, it makes it actually funny for me. Randy Daytona (Dan Fogler) is a washed up former Olympic ping-pong contender who lost big in the 1988 games. During that same match, his father was killed after he bet on the match, which his son lost. Now fast forward to the present where FBI agent Ernie Rodriguez (George Lopez) recruits Randy to infiltrate the illegal underworld of table tennis run by the nefarious Feng (played by a vary un-Asian looking Christopher Walken). Feng, coincidentally, was also responsible for the death of Randy's dad all those years ago. Randy is aided in his quest to reclaim his ping-pong glory by Master Wong (James Hong) and his niece Maggie (Maggie Q).
Almost every joke in the movie is a play on the name "ping-pong" or some sexual connotation associated with it. Come on, the movie's tagline is "A Huge Comedy with Tiny Balls" and who could forget that poster with the paddle and the conveniently placed ping-pong balls. What's also strange is the absurd amount of kickboxing thrown into the movie when its supposed to be about people playing table tennis. There's really nothing you can try to analyze in this picture. It's just dumb entertainment, and frankly this could have been a lot better. Really the concept is not bad at all. If the writers had actually tried to put some real humor in there, this could have been great. Instead, we get sex humor that will make a bunch of seventh graders laugh, but that's about it.
Another reason I think I may have liked it was because my expectations were just so low, that anything could have been better than what I was expecting. After all, I was extremely skeptical of this from the get-go, after hearing it was from the people who created "Reno 911!" which I absolutely hate. However, I was fascinated by the way everyone was able to do all of the extensive ping-pong stunts though, and I think they should have shown some of that in the special features section. Speaking of special features, "Balls of Fury" doesn't really have that much to offer. There's a bunch of deleted scenes (I can understand why they deleted them), an alternate ending, and two little making-of featurettes where they shamelessly praise themselves for making such a great movie. I really don't think anyone is really going to watch the special features though, but they had to include something.
There are literally hundreds of other films I could recommend before telling you to go out and see "Balls of Fury" but then again there are hundreds worse than this. More than likely, this film will just fade into obscurity in a few years, and no one will really remember it. It's just mediocre and although it was somewhat funny, it could have been a lot better. This is more for the pre-teens and teenagers than for everyone, as most people will just get annoyed after the first ten minutes. Chances are, if you haven't seen it and don't think you're going to like "Balls of Fury" you're better off not seeing it than wasting your time and money.
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