25 Sep 2007

Balls of Fury

Director: Robert Ben Garant

Starring: Maggie Q, Christopher Walken, Dan Fogler

Release: 2007-09-18

We all need to a good fun B-grade movie once in a while to remind ourselves not to take life too seriously. And Balls of Fury is just the movie for the job! Come on, with Christopher Walken playing gay ping-pong kungfu master who wears costumes that look like they were stolen from Memoirs of a Geisha, how can you say no?

Terrific new comic actor Dan Fogler plays a down-and-out loser who performs ping-pong tricks at cheap dinner theatres for a living, when the FBI swoops in and recruits him for an undercover operation to capture an evil ping-pong-playing crime lord (played by Christopher Walken).

In Karate-Kid style, Dan is trained by a kungfu ping-pong master (James Hong) who says supposedly-wise but utterly meaningless things like ''Remember, you suck when you are nervous" and "Ping-pong is not the Macarena". Armed with new playing techniques, Dan goes into the jungles in Central America where he must face the queeny crime lord Christopher and his bevy of gay sex slaves...

Balls of Fury is a laugh-fest if you enjoy deliberately dumb comedies like Blades of Glory and Talladega Nights. There are plenty of witty one-liners, idiotic gags and cheap pratfalls to satisfy cheese-loving moviegoers. The biggest surprise of all is the impressive comic turn by newcomer Dan Fogler in the lead.

Normally, we wouldn't recommend this sort of film. But Balls of Fury is a ball of fun. Just don't leave home with your brain.