'Dodgeball' chock full of testosterone

Staff

Published Friday, June 25, 2004

Suffolk News-Herald

Hey, guess what? There's a new movie out starring Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn, and it's called "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story."

That's right. Someone actually took the time to plot out a movie about that ageless playground contest in which the object is to pick up a round rubber ball and fire it at your opponent hard enough to knock him out of the game. It's a time when it's fun to smoke someone upside the head with a ball, and we don't even mind getting hit a few times, as long as we'd be back to get revenge. No skill, no athleticism - just a serious batch of testosterone

That by itself is reason enough to check out the latest flick. But there is more to "Dodgeball" than just an overblown plot and shameless humor. OK, maybe not much more, but more than enough to watch it.

Stiller is White Goodman, the 30-miles-over-the-top egomaniac with a Fu Manchu mustache that makes him look like he's becoming a werewolf, and Vaughn is Peter LaFluer, the laid-back-but-don't-dare-get-him-ticked sedative that just serves to set off Goodman's neuroticism to the breaking point. Their relationship is sort of like Abbott and Costello if Costello wanted to destroy Abbott and Abbott sublimely dared him to try it.

Goodman is the proud (more of himself than anyone else) owner of Globo Gym, where "We're better than you, and we know it!" The multi-million-dollar franchise is looking to purchase LaFluer's Average Joe's gym, full of dysfunctional losers, shabby equipment and motivational signs that say stuff like, "You're not OK, I'm not OK, but that's OK." Average Joe's is ready to foreclose, and unless they can come up with a quick $50,000, it'll be a parking lot by next weekend.

Without a choice or much of a chance, LaFluer gathers his bunch of Joes together for one last shot - the Las Vegas International Dodgeball Open, where the prize is - you guessed it - $50,000. After learning the basics of the game through one of those black-and-white educational jimmies that we all saw in science class (who knew that the sport was invented by opium-smoking Chinese hurling severed heads at one another?) and narrowly escaping crushing defeat at the hands of a girl scout troop, the Joes, armed with little more than luck and determination, head west to save their gym.

"Dodgeball" is chock-full of juvenile humor, and it's smart and gutsy enough not to apologize for any of it. It's like it's saying, "Sure, we know we're going for the cheap, childish, mean-spirited, sometimes tasteless laughs, but we dare you to keep from laughing!"

It's brainless in a misunderstood brilliance sort of way. Much like its title sport, "Dodgeball" moves at the pace of a cheetah on fire, and viewers never know where the next laugh is going to come from.

It's a bunch of average Joes Schmoes that represent everyone who ever got dumped for the handsome, brainless jock, every good little schoolgirl who got passed over for Homecoming Queen by a blonde bimbo with a body to kill for and a mind that couldn't comprehend "Green Eggs and Ham," and for everyone who was ever told that they weren't popular enough to fit in with the clique-ish "in crowd." With the 'Power to the Misfits!' attitude of "Animal House," the 'Brains Beat Brawn' persona of "Revenge of the Nerds," and the 'No Enemy is Unbeatable' mantra of... well, just about every sports film, "Dodgeball" is a winner for us all.

Grade: B+

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