Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story isn’t usually the type of movie that I pay good money to see. Movies that use groin-punching and wrench-throwing to get patrons to laugh just doesn’t do it for me anymore. Or so I thought. I am sorry to say that Dodgeball was able to pilfer more than a few laughs from what I thought to be my sophisticated comedic palate. Yeah, maybe I am a sell-out for laughing in the theatres at the same things that I disgusted me during the TV ads, but I guess despite my preconceived notions, my tastes can run just as low-brow as the rest of society‘s. (Oh don‘t give me that...you are the people who keep paying to see Adam Sandler movies!)
Ah, dodgeball. The sport which places strong and aggressive kids at the top of the pecking order, and the weak ones at the very bottom. So naturally, someone thought to turn this often-times emotionally traumatizing sport into a movie! Vince Vaughn stars as Peter La Fleur, an average Joe who owns a gym called (natch) Average Joe’s Gym. His chief competition comes from GloboGym, run by White Goodman: a man so vile that at one point in the movie, he makes a woman “throw-up a little in [her] mouth.” That woman is Kate Veatch (played by Christine Taylor), a lawyer who informs Peter that unless he can raise $50,000 his gym will be repossessed and sold to Goodman. Peter gathers his rag-tag group of clients, and along with Kate, hope to win the $50,000 playing in a national dodgeball tournment.
Dodgeball‘s plot is nothing new; I could probably name several movies that implement the exact same formula. (For one, The Brady Bunch Movie, which also stars Christine Taylor.) But for a summer comedy, the story isn’t nearly as important as the jokes that it fosters, and I was surprised at how many of the jokes and gags worked! A few are as random as the Terror Alert System (that Nazi Michael Moore should enjoy that pun), such as Kate’s obsession with unicorns. Others reek of Mel Brooks, such as when Goodman produces $100,000. And there is even a little American Pie thrown in for good measure, such as when Goodman has an intimate experience with a slice of pizza. For the most part though, director Rawson Marshall Thurber relies on people getting hit in the groin, and slow-motion Matrix-style dodgeball impacts to produce laughs. But what was shocking was that I actually laughed. Perhaps it was that Thurber was able to keep the humor fresh enough so that they never outlasted their welcome, or that the running gags never out-ran the target. Whatever way you slice it though, I laughed.
Vince Vaughn continues his string of roles playing the “everyman,” and he is very good at it. We can associate ourselves with Peter, but of course we never feel too sorry to laugh when he gets hit with a dodgeball or two. Ben Stiller must have some weird pact with the devil. It is only June, and this is already his fourth movie of 2004, along with Along Came Polly, Starsky & Hutch, and Envy, and he still has at least one (possibly two) more films to be released this year...and they have all been successful! (Well...we will look the other way in the case of Envy.) He is wickedly funny as White Goodman. You really detest this character, and Stiller’s nuances only help. Ben Stiller’s real-life spouse Christine Taylor plays Kate, and despite still resembling Marcia from The Brady Bunch Movie, she is believable enough. The rest of the cast is filled with people you may recognize but not be able to name such as Rip Torn, Justin Long (Jeepers Creepers), Stephan Root (Office Space’s Milton), Hank Azaria, and Gary Cole (another Brady Bunch Movie cast member).
I really wasn‘t expecting much from this movie, but I was pleasantly surprised at what awaited me. Dodgeball isn’t going to capture the attention of the Oscar-voters (...well, I hope not. But after LOTR reaped 11 awards, God only knows...), but if you get tired seeing one comic-book adaptation after another (I’m looking at you, Spider-Man 2!!!), Dodgeball makes an excellent choice for a laugh or twenty.
Grade: B
© 2004 Jacob Sproul
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