Balls of Fury: Movie Review by Christopher Smith (2007)

(Published Sept. 3, 2007)

In spite of what's its title suggests, "Balls of Fury" isn't a sex comedy. The balls of fury here are ping-pong balls. Let's just leave it at that.

As for the movie, it's about underground table tennis tournaments, which apparently are revered in the Asian community (somebody might want to clue them in on this), who take to the sport in ways that often are deadly for the participant--and, in this case, deadly dull for the audience.

This fractured, mostly unfunny movie seemed as if it might have offered the same inspired lunacy found in, say, the recent figure-skating satire "Blades of Glory."

But that's not the case. The film, which director Robert Ben Garant based on a script he co-wrote with Thomas Lennon, joins most current films dumped in the dog pound of summer's end in that it fails to meet even the lowest expectations.

The film stars Dan Fogler as Randy Daytona, a hirsute, plus-sized rocker whose favorite group is Def Leppard and whose claim to fame is that he has the ability to turn ping-pong balls into balls of fury at the tennis table.

Daytona's skills have been honed since childhood, but after falling off the circuit years ago when he was defeated at the Seoul Olympics by a mincing German, he now is ushered back into the fold by FBI agent Rodriguez (George Lopez, wasted), who needs Daytona to get back into form so they can take on and defeat the evil Feng (Christopher Walken).

Daytona agrees, particularly since it's Feng who killed his father. Trouble is, in order to get close to the man, he first needs to retrain himself in order to return to his former glory. To that end, helping him is a subplot inspired by the "Karate Kid" movies that finds Daytona being guided by the blind ping-pong master, Wong (James Hong), as well as by Maggie (Maggie Q), a beautiful woman who initially loathes him until, bizarrely, she suddenly decides to love him.

It's just one false move in a movie filled with them. While Walken looks funny in his blowout wig and his kitschy kimonos, he doesn't do much with the role beyond playing a riff on himself. In another movie, one that featured dialogue the actor could sell, this might have worked. But "Balls of Fury" is at its weakest with its dialogue, which is as corny and as uninspired as something you'd find in an amateur production posted on YouTube.

As for Fogler, a stage actor who makes his big-screen debut here, he will remind many of Jack Black, but as likable as the man could be in the right role, he doesn't run with the material in ways that Black would have. Instead, he's just the subject of endless pratfalls, most of which hit him hard below the belt and leave him doubled over in pain in ways that audiences will appreciate all too well.

Grade: D+