Balls Of Fury DVD Review

"Balls Of Fury" reviews

DVD

Balls Of Fury

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2008-04-18 16:50:13

Provider

DVD Review

The sight of the perennially menacing Christopher Walken as Feng, a wig-wearing, ping pong-obsessed Triad crime overlord and Fu Man Chu look-alike, is enough to provide any movie with the odd giggle.

Unfortunately, this first, and possibly only, table-tennis comedy has not too much more to recommend it. Taking a less than mainstream sport and using it for comic effect has been done before ), but what writer/director Robert Ben Garant didn't seem to realise was that such potentially weak material needs to be played to perfection or its repetitious gags fall as flat as a ping pong paddle.

And while Dodgeball had Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn, and Blades of Glory boasted the comedy genius of Will Ferrell and Jon Heder, this one just doesn't have the stars to pull off the third-grade humour.

Walken is at his scarily deranged best, but Dan Fogler, as washed up old pro Randy Daytona, hired by the CIA to infiltrate Walken's Enter The Dragon-style tournament, falls a little short of the mark. Despite raising the odd laugh, particularly while being trained back to form by James Hong's table-tennis version of Mr Miyagi, Wang, and his eye-poppingly flexible niece (Maggie Q), the string of visual gags runs dry well before the end.

There are worse sporting comedies out there, but there are certainly plenty of better ones too.

The DVD extras feature a making of documentary and a comedy featurette.