When a comedy opens on the infamously worst box-office weekend of the year, it’s already suspect. But when they call it “Balls of Fury”? Yikes. You know you better not be expecting, say, the sophisticated wit of a Preston Sturges or the satirical piquancy of an Oscar Wilde.
No, if the title must resort to genitalia-related double entendre for a pathetic attempt at a laugh, a film critic can only cast down her eyes, shake her head and groan.
“Balls” doesn’t just lack, er, comedic bounce. It lives down to one’s low expectations in most respects. A faded duplicate of this spring’s overrated Will Farrell farce “Blades of Glory,” which ridiculed world-class ice skaters, this one also follows the comeback of an out-of-shape former champ. Only here the “sport” up for scorn is pingpong. And instead of Farrell, it stars Dan Fogler, a big-screen unknown with New York theater cred. It would be gratuitous flattery to call this clown a poor man’s Jack Black just because he is also large and silly. Whereas Black is usually likable and often funny, Fogler, um, isn’t.
He plays Randy Daytona, a former child prodigy pingponger who choked during a pivotal match and got his father (Robert Patrick) killed in the process. It is 19 years later. Randy is a has-been and a bumbling tub of goo.
But that doesn’t stop FBI agent Ernie Rodriquez (George Lopez) from recruiting him to regain his skills and spearhead a sting operation by penetrating an elite, illegal, sudden-death pongpong tournament run by the very crime kingpin who killed his dad. Can he get revenge and win the heart of his pingponging honey (Maggie Q)?
Ironically, “Balls” doesn’t have any. It doesn’t even have the courage of its cheap, sophomoric convictions. Instead of just going for the low-brow vulgarity with gusto, like this month’s smarter and more amusing “Superbad,” it avoids the commercially limiting “R” rating and resorts to those tired chestnuts of PG-13 comedies: mockery of minority groups (particularly Asians) and the infirm (especially the blind), random pratfalls and furious thwacks to the crotch.
Director Ben Garant and his co-screenwriter Thomas Lennon (who also co-stars as a stereotypically vicious German pingponger) have a history of appealing to the dumbed-down sensibilities of the American public. Their credits include Comedy Central’s “Reno 911” and “Night at the Museum.”
Only the presence of two old showbiz war horses, James Hong as a legendary pingpong master and Christopher Walken as the megalomaniacal villain, have a slightly redeeming effect.
These two ham it up with glee. But not even they can make “Balls” worth bearing.
‘Balls of Fury’
*
Starring: Dan Fogler, George Lopez, Christopher Walken
Director: Ben Garant
Rated PG-13 for crude and sex-related humor, and for language
Running time: 90 minutes
