Balls of Fury
Dir. Robert Ben Garant
Premiered August 29, 2007
Balls of Fury was heavily advertised throughout August of 2007, and even a dumb high schooler like myself could sense from the trailers that it was too stupid for my tastes. I didn’t dread watching it for this project, but I wasn’t looking forward to it either.
Well, color me surprised. Instead of being awful, Balls of Fury was just endlessly mediocre.
At the 1988 Summer Olympics, child ping pong prodigy Randy Daytona (Dan Fogler) was humiliated in a defeat by East Germany’s champion Karl Wolffschtagg (Thomas Lennon). Not only did the loss make him a global laughing stock, it also cost the life of his father (Robert Patrick), a gambling addict done in by the mysterious triad kingpin Feng.
As an adult, Daytona’s doing ping-pong stunts for unappreciative audiences in Reno when he is contacted by an FBI agent (George Lopez) interested in tracking down Feng (revealed to be played by Christopher Walken, apparently doing a Christopher Walken impression). The FBI sets Randy up with new trainers (James Hong and Maggie Q) so that he will qualify for Feng’s tournament in Central America, only to discover that Feng is completely mad, and that the tournament will be a fight to the death.
Don’t get me wrong. Balls of Fury is not funny. It has one joke, that ping pong is serious business. And that joke falls even more flat when it’s built around the film’s star. In the past, I’ve called Dan Fogler “the poor man’s Josh Gad,” and I regret it, because while Gad is prone to gibbering pantomime, Fogler, by contrast, lumbers absentmindedly through this film as if he’s taken a wrong turn, stumbled onto the set, and been mistaken for the real star. The rest of the film tries to make up for this by surrounding him with high-caliber comedic actors (Terry Crews, James Hong, Aisha Tyler, and Patton Oswalt, whose one scene gave me the only chuckle of the film), but their jokes mostly come off as either orphaned punchlines or mediocre improvisation.
Balls of Fury, overall, is the most meh film I’ve come across doing this series. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if I woke up tomorrow morning and forgot it completely.
Signs This Was Made in 2007
There’s a cameo by Heroes’ Masi Oka.
Additional Notes
Some of the interior scenes in the film look a little strange, like they were shot on video and converted into film in post, like a British TV show.
This film repeatedly and mysteriously implies that Los Angeles is located in Orange County, California, an idea that residents of both localities would take offense to.
How Did It Do?
Balls of Fury grossed $41.1 million against an undisclosed budget, suggesting it didn’t profit, but it’s so cheap-looking that one can’t be certain. I don’t know what’s more surprising– that it made that much at all or that it still only ranked 106th for the whole year– but critics were not having it. Earning a 22% rating on RottenTomatoes, the majority of critics concluded that it was too tame to be funny or offensive– except for Richard Roeper, who in his overcompensating glory declared it “deadly.”
Next Time: Lust, Caution
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