Balls of Fury

August 29th, 2007 by James Cook | Source:

Directed by: Ben Garant
Written by: Thomas Lennon, Ben Garant
Starring: Dan Fogler, George Lopez, Christopher Walken, Maggie Q, James Hong, Terry Crews

Score: 1/10

There’s honestly no point for me to waste anytime with this review. Straight up - Balls of Furry is the worst movie I’ve seen all year. I didn’t think it was possible for any movie to beat out I Know Who Killed Me for that title, and yet here we are.

The story follows Randy Daytona (Dan Fogler), a former child prodigy of ping pong. At the ripe age of twelve Randy goes to the Olympics where he is defeated by German superstar Karl Wolfschtagg (Thomas Lennon). Randy’s father (Robert Patrick) makes a bet on the game and can’t pay it back. He’s killed and Randy quits playing ping pong forever.

Later in life we see Randy has become part of an act in some lame dinner theatre production. After one of his shows a FBI agent approaches Randy. He says that there is a top secret Ping Pong tournament held by super criminal Feng (Christopher Walken). Feng is the man responsible for the death of Randy’s father. Randy eventually agrees to participate in the tournament and help the FBI try and bring down Feng.

Randy has to go through several ping pong matches to get into the tournament. He trains with a blind guy and has feelings for said blind guy’s daughter (Maggie Q). It’s all very straight forward, and can someone please tell me what movie Christopher Walken won’t do for a paycheck?

Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant, the people that conceived this garbage are the two guys behind Reno 911!. I found that really surprising at first, because Reno 911 is pretty funny show and at times has moments that are just hysterical. Then I found out that they’ve also written The Pacifier, Taxi and Herbie Fully Loaded. So maybe Reno 911! was some kind of weird fluke.

The part I smiled at the most was when Patton Oswalt came on screen. He was one of the lesser opponents that Daytona has to play in order to get to the bigger game. I was all prepared to laugh, and then they just cut to the end of the game. We don’t get to see anything and Patton Oswalt is on screen a minute at most.

You can tell that the filmmakers are striving to be like a typical Will Ferrell sports comedy, and Dan Fogler is putting on his best Jack Black impersonation. They don’t even come close. The jokes all fall flat and nobody has any comedic timing. How many times do I have to see someone get hit in the balls with something, and how many times do I have to see the blind guy run into something. I get it he’s a blind guy, and the movie is peppered with those kinds of lame jokes.

Ping Pong ultimately has nothing to do with the movie at all. You can take ping pong out of the equation and put in anything. It really doesn’t matter. The story has been done time and time again. There is absolutely no originality at all here. Most of the other comedies that this movie is trying to be use basic premises as only a starting point for the jokes. Balls of Fury never gets past its basic premise and is simply not funny.

Overall, Balls of Furry is not funny and is painful to watch. After great comedies like Knocked Up and Superbad it’s hard to sit through absolute garbage like this. It all boils down to this, some people know how to write great comedy and some people don’t. I just hope that the people that made this movie realize that and never attempt comedy again.