‘Balls of Fury’
is one sorry flick

At the Movies
By Senitra Horbrook

Hollywood keeps coming out with these obscure sports comedies centering on sports that the general public doesn’t care much about. Balls of Fury is the latest in the genre.
Unlike the surprisingly funny Dodgeball and Blades of Glory, Balls of Fury is a silly movie with only a sprinkling of laughs that don’t make it worth a trip to the theater.
Balls of Fury is basically a one-joke movie; sadly, that one joke isn’t all that funny. Aware of the premise as I entered the theater, I didn’t have high hopes for a movie about Ping-Pong that relied on the double entendre "a huge comedy with tiny balls" as its tagline, but I hoped for the best.
Writers Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant (who also is the director) seemed to have attempted to create some hilarious martial-arts spoof about the underworld of illegal Ping-Pong. Instead of hits, most of the jokes are misses.
Ping-Pong may be a popular game and fun game to play, but it doesn’t translate well on the big screen. I can think of a lot more exciting things than watching the dramatic backhand of a Ping-Pong pro. The writers must have thought this also and decided to add in a little kung fu, channeling Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon.
The film centers on former Ping-Pong phenom Randy Daytona (Dan Fogler), who has been down on his luck for years. The height of his career came as a child in the 1980s, back when Def Leppard still had hit songs on the charts. After Daytona suffers a painful loss in the 1988 Olympics, things don’t get much better — his father is murdered.
Years later, Daytona is approached by FBI agent Ernie Rodriguez (George Lopez) to help take down the criminal who has connections to the death of Daytona’s father. The bad guy criminal, Feng (Christopher Walken), has a strange love of Ping-Pong. Feng holds Ping-Pong tournaments that take the idea of sudden death to a whole new level.
Daytona needs to brush up on his skills, and with the help of a blind Ping-Pong master named Wong (James Hong), and his pretty niece Maggie (Maggie Q), Daytona is ready to take on Ping-Pong’s best and brightest.
Balls of Fury might have had more going for it — if it had the star power of someone like Jack Black or Will Ferrell. Dan Fogler (picture an even scruffier version of Jack Black) goes through the motions but is just not very funny. Maybe the material is to blame for Fogler’s lackluster performance. I’d be willing to give him a chance to redeem himself and show some true comedic chops in another movie, since he did win a Tony award in 2005 for his performance in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.
Christopher Walken pretty much steals the movie and would be the only reason to catch this on cable. Unfortunately, he doesn’t even show up until the second half of the film. Walken’s character, Feng, keeps a pack of boy sex slaves for the tournament participants. He also keeps a panda as a pet, but he’s not really sure if it’s alive or dead. Wearing crazy kimonos and wigs, Walken seems to be having a good time playing dress-up.
I don’t know how long of a shelf life these sports comedies will have, but I can just picture some upcoming movies. I wouldn’t be surprised if the coming years bring movies about the illegal underworld of bowling and badminton. Hopefully, they learn a lesson from Balls of Fury. Sports comedy can be tricky. ••
Movie Grade: D