Pingpong should be mocked. There’s the name, for one, and the tiny shorts and intense looks of concentration. As Olympic sports go, table tennis is right up there with synchronized swimming. Making a comedy about pingpong should be roughly as difficult as finding a squirrel to eat your bread bowl outside Rand. Unfortunately, even Christopher Walken can’t save this mess.
“Balls of Fury” attempts to follow in the footsteps of “Blades of Glory” with a simple game plan: start with a down-on-his-luck former phenom in a sport that defines the meaning of “niche” and make him mount an incredible comeback. Come to think of it, “Balls” would have made a terrific Will Ferrell flick. Then it might have been funny.
Alas, it’s not Ferrell but Dan Fogler playing the schlubby has-been, Randy Daytona, a name whose aptitude for appropriation by a porn star can’t be coincidence.
One of the few witty sequences in the movie includes spliced-in footage of Ronald and Nancy Reagan “witnessing” Daytona’s spectacular flameout in the Seoul Olympics. Nineteen years later, he’s an overweight geek with a wardrobe full of Def Leppard T-shirts. Fogler’s depiction of Daytona can be described as Jack Black in “School of Rock” meets Chris Farley in … just about anything. He’s adequate but does nothing to rise above the material.
The FBI, in the shape of Mario Lopez, wants Daytona to go undercover in the seedy underbelly of high-stakes pingpong to track down the nefarious Feng (Christopher Walken), who just happens to be the murderer of Daytona’s father. Maggie Q shows up also; she might have had a few lines, but they don’t matter, as she’s strictly there just to look hot.
Walken ought to be the crowning glory of “Balls.” But despite his talent, this is also a man who was in “Joe Dirt” and “Gigli.” Chalk this one up as another poor choice. He doesn’t even appear until nearly halfway through the movie, and then he slinks around in Chinese robes stolen from Elton John while struggling to deliver wretched dialogue with any kind of panache. The role is not well-suited to his deadpan strengths; Feng needs more mustache-twirling.
The concept of “Balls of Fury” is vastly funnier than its execution. If you don’t see almost every joke coming at least 30 seconds before it actually happens, you have either never seen a movie before or have been recently lobotomized. You’d have more fun watching actual competitive table tennis.
