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Back Shelf Beauties
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Dodgeball I loved playing Dodgeball when I was a kid. Not because I was some hulking stud who could whip the ball 90 miles an hour at a cowering wimp (you know me better than that), but because, even back then, I had a little bit of a gut, so I could catch the ball without getting hurt. The Big Hulk would whip it at me, and I would catch it. Gotta love the natural padding. Vince Vaughn stars as Peter LaFleur - the lackadaisical owner of Average Joe's Gym. The place is a dive, losing money and full of quirky characters, but Pete doesn't care until the bank forecloses and it might be purchased by his archrival, White Goodman (Ben Stiller). White used to be an overweight guy, but he motivated himself into becoming a muscular fitness guru who owns GloboGym. As revenge for all of the pranks Pete has played on him over the years, White is determined to buy Average Joe's and bulldoze it to the ground (I wish we could have seen some of the pranks). With no hope of raising the $50,000 he owes the bank, Pete allows the Average Joe's members to talk him into joining a dodgeball tournament in Las Vegas, which happens to have a $50,000 grand prize. Can these losers overcome themselves and their history of failure to defeat White and his pack of ringers? Dodgeball has a great premise that helps skewer formulaic 80's movies, coverage of sports on TV, and workout obsessed gym rats, but writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber always seems to scratch at the surface instead of diving in head first and delivering greatness. The pieces are there, but Thurber often relies on crude, unsubtle double entendres (get ready for lots of jokes about balls), when he could be fleshing out the story and making the whole film more substantive with better dialogue, more than one dimension for the characters and a less straightforward, by-the-numbers story. I am not saying he should give us a bunch of touching sub-plots about teamwork and baloney like that, but he could have satirized them. We are treated to screwball characters like the opposing dodgeball teams and the wackos at the gym, but Dodgeball isn't zany enough. Thurber, who seems to have talent, could go 100% screwball, but holds back so much that some wacky characters don't fit in, but could have, and could have been funnier, if they went for it. Luckily, not everyone suffers from this approach. Stiller and Vaughn are about 200 times better than everything else in this movie including the other actors, the script and the direction. When Dodgeball focuses on their oddball rivalry, the movie soars to comedic heights as Vaughn plays the cool leader (a la Bill Murray) and Stiller is the worked up, hyper-uptight rival who can't believe he is losing to this guy (a la every Bill Murray antagonist). Stiller is the only actor who appropriately goes over the top and shows no fear of embarrassing himself with his wild antics even when the material falls short. A true comic actor takes this approach, and Stiller is the one for the job. Vaughn is great as the nonchalant leader and serves as a steady straight man to Stiller's crazy comic relief, but gets his funny lines as well. You'll enjoy the intentionally B-list cameos, Gary Cole and Justin Bateman as the announcers, Vaughn, and Stiller, so you might as well have a good time even though the movie could have been better and tries a little too hard at the end. 2 ½ Waffles (Out Of 4) Copyright 2004 - WaffleMovies.com
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