K-SCORE: 54
Writer/Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Starring: Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Christine Taylor, Rip Torn, Justin Long, Stephen Root, Alan Tudyk, Joel Moore, Gary Cole, Jason Bateman, William Shatner, Hank Azaria, Lance Armstrong (oops)
Spoiler Level: Moderate
“The strategy to get you to laugh is borderline cheating.”
Was this it? Was this the beginning of the end, the first in a series of comedies that would lead us to the likes of Neighbors, Ted, Hot Tub Time Machine, 21 Jump Street, Horrible Bosses, Tammy, Sex Tape, The Hangover, This is the End, and anything starring mall cops? Look, it’s not that this film is particularly bad, it’s that it might be evil. The strategy to get you to laugh is borderline cheating. They just upped the number of jokes per minute from two or three to twenty or thirty, and consequently it doesn’t matter if only three percent of them are actually funny. You walk away thinking, okay, I remember laughing at that. I didn’t think this was a problem when I first saw this film twelve years ago, but now I think it’s either the genesis or the embodiment of a detrimental philosophy in comedy-making. Sure, throw Chuck Norris in there for two seconds. That’ll make people giggle.
“it’s not that those wrenches break the machine, it’s just that what’s next?”
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story is not to be taken seriously, as evidenced by the fact that Stephen Root’s character gets hit by two cars and Rip Torn’s character is a handicapped coach that gets crushed by a giant “Luck of the Irish” display in a casino. To death. Which is fine, but it’s failure to do anything other than make you chuckle puts a lot of pressure on those jokes. The classic narrative arc serves as a weak but functional skeleton for those jokes. Thankfully Ben Stiller’s absurdity, Jason Bateman’s addled-but-pleased facial expressions, and a handful of background details make it watchable and even rewatchable. On another look, I was only annoyed that it’s solution to humor devoid of cleverness was to literally throw wrenches at the cast and watch them writhe around in pain. And it’s not that those wrenches break the machine, it’s just that what’s next? How do you raise the stakes from that comedic base? Where does it end because a couple years ago I watched Seth Rogen milk a woman like a cow, and the sequel to that film came out in May.
How much can I really fault a light and dumb comedy that tells a functional story, beginning, middle, and end, especially considering that some sick part of me also thought: maybe I too would like to throw a wrench at Justin Long...