Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

3/4

Starring: Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Christine Taylor, Justin Long, Stephen Root, Joel David Moore, Rip Torn

Rated PG-13 for Rude and Sexual Humor and Language

"Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story" is a satire of sports movies and underdog stories.  Writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber enjoys sending up the cliches of these formulas in surprising ways.  Sometimes subtle (although not often), every beat and plot idea gets its due.

Peter La Fleur (Vaughn) is the owner of Average Joe's Gym, a neighborhood gym that's deeply in debt.  $50,000 to be exact.  Peter's rival, GloboGym owner White Goodman (Stiller) wants to buy Average Joe's and expand his own gym.  In a last ditch effort to save their hangout, Peter and a few of his friends enter a dodgeball tournament that could net them the fifty g's.  Naturally, once White finds out about this, he and a few of his employees form their own team to take him down.

The comedy is uneven.  Sometimes the humor hits the mark (anything with dodgeball legend Patches O'Houlihan (Torn) is guaranteed to get a laugh).  Other times its cliched (the girl scout on steroids) or just too dumb to get a response.  Still, I was engaged, and there are some big laughs in the movie.

The acting is effective, which isn't terribly surprising since everyone in the cast has shown talent in the past.  Vince Vaughn is a good everyman, and is unusually low-key (compare that to his awful turn in "The Watch" where he appeared to be on cocaine in every scene).  Ben Stiller seems to be enjoying himself immensely as the narcissistic wannabe-Adonis.  The role brings to mind "Heavy Weights," another movie where he played a fitness freak ("Dodgeball" contains a reference to it at the very end).  Also good is Christine Taylor (Stiller's wife), who wasn't very funny in "Zoolander."  Here, she's more loose and fits the role a lot better.  And Justin Long is perfectly lovable as the lovelorn high school student Justin.  Also worth mentioning is Jason Bateman, who plays a completely drugged out announcer.  He's worth mentioning because this is a rare instance when he's actually funny.

Some of Thurber's humor is unique.  Take for instance the fact that sometimes the characters actually acknowledge that something funny has happened (Rip Torn's final scene is an example).  Or the fact that White Goodman runs his gym as if he's a sadistic cult leader.  And unlike many films, where the cameo is merely just a big name actor in a bit appearance, Thurber actually uses the actors' reputations as a source for humor.  David Hasselhoff and Lance Armstrong are examples (Chuck Norris and William Shatner also make brief appearances).

The film could have been made with a sharper satirical blade, and some of the humor doesn't fly (Steve the Pirate is an example...rather than laughing, I felt embarrassed for Alan Tudyk), but all in all it's a good time.

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