Balls Of Fury (7/10)
posted in Movie Reviews |
Like Hot Rod, this movie thrives on the use of stupidity for comedy. It’s dangerous when stupidity is your primary form of comedy in a film, cause it’s either gonna work or it’s not. Thankfully, a majority of the jokes in this one work, much like Hot Rod.
Writing: Like Hot Rod, not all the jokes work. The film occasionally falls on its face, but it doesn’t do it too often or too completely. The plot of the film is a riff on so many of the Bloodsport, Karate Kid, what-have-you 80’s films. It mixes in a fair amount of international espionage action to give it some more retro flair.
Production: The use of lameness for humor is carried over into the production, who takes the jokes a step further playing of bad stereotypes and big action scenes. It’s the kind of parody that most bad parody comedies in recent years don’t get - when you are lovingly making fun of other films, or the genre as a whole. If you consider the talentless hacks that churn out pieces of crap like the first couple Scare Movie entries, Date Movie or Epic Movie, movies like Hot Rod and Balls Of Fury are pure brilliance. Then again, so would just about anything ever made.
Cast: Dan Fogler is fun in the lead role of ping pong natural Randy Daytona. He balances charm and loser quite nicely. George Lopez is quite funny as loser FBI Agent Ernie Rodriguez, who talks Daytona into this far fetched “plan B” situation. James Hong is funny as the requisite sensei. Maggie Q is fun as his daughter and the main romantic lead. Robert Patrick has fun in his couple scenes as Randy’s father, Sgt. Pete Daytona. But it’s Diedrich Bader who lands some of the funniest stuff in the movie, including a scene with a delivery so deadpanned and perfectly timed that it had me laughing out loud for a couple minutes.
Music: Randy Edelman has great fun playing up the goofball drama, understanding something that Elmer Bernstein exemplified back in the early 80’s - the approach to comedic films of scoring them as seriously as possible. Edelman takes things on as if it were a grand sports epic, embracing things like the big training motif and the “final confrontation” type cue.
