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In the post-Dodgeball world, the recipe for the perfect oddball sport comedy has remained the same: Take a moderately popular (but quirky) sport, add a washed-up prodigy with an insane mentor and instill in the prodigy a burning passion to return to greatness as he hilariously defeats ludicrous opponents. Let that formula simmer for 90 minutes or so - or until you run out of homophobic and flatulence-loving jokes - and call it a day.

Unfortunately, Balls of Fury director Ben Garant (Deputy Travis Junior on Reno 911!) left out an ingredient (sadly, the most important one) while concocting his movie - originality. The movie is so similar to Dodgeball that it's hard to believe Garant and co. didn't just replace the word "dodgeball" with "Ping-Pong," switch some main characters' names and voilà - a sub-par, pseudo-action film is born.

While similar movies like Blades of Glory and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby were able to get by on Will Ferrell's star power, Balls of Fury's recognizable faces include Christopher Walken (Hairspray) dressed in ridiculous Dracula-esque garbs as the evil Ping-Pong enthusiast Feng and George Lopez (George Lopez) as washed-up FBI agent Ernie Rodriguez.

And besides a quick cameo from Heroes' Masi Oka, the only thing Balls of Fury has going for it is intense table-tennis action. Everything else is just sadly extraneous.

The movie focuses on Randy Daytona (Dan Fogler, School for Scoundrels), a table-tennis whiz kid with an unhealthy love for Def Leppard and who, as a preteen in 1988, was humiliated at the Olympics. As a child, Daytona thought this humiliation then led to his father's (Robert Patrick, Bridge to Terabithia) - an ex-marine and compulsive gambler - murder.

Shocked at this turn of events, Daytona quits playing professionally and ends up taking a gig at a Ping-Pong sideshow in Reno, Nev.

Daytona's miserable life is turned upside down when Rodriguez lures him out of retirement in order to catch Feng, the merciless criminal mastermind who murdered Daytona's father after he was unable to pay a gambling debt. Rodriguez assures Daytona that Feng can easily be caught, as long as Daytona manages to get invited to Feng's infamous, sudden-death table-tennis tournament and helps authorities from the inside.

But the Dodgeball similarities come fast and furious, especially after Daytona gets thoroughly crushed at a tournament at a local community center. Rodriguez takes him to Reno's best Ping-Pong instructor - Master Wong (James Hong, Mulan, Wayne's World 2), who just happens to be blind - and his attractive-yet-fierce niece Maggie (Maggie Q, Live Free or Die Hard) whip Daytona into shape in no time. In yet another Dodgeball parallel, Wong and Maggie use all sorts of "if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball" tactics, such as making Daytona play Ping-Pong with a spoon and locking him in a room with bees, to make Daytona a table-tennis master.

However, the quirky-sport-movie shtick doesn't end there. Each competitor Daytona battles has some quirk, such as the Siamese twins and the spandex-wearing East German who Daytona famously lost to in the Olympics and now must beat. Strangely enough, this seems just like the plot of Dodgeball. How shocking.

It all sounds outlandish, and the acting in the film doesn't help. Walken borders on unbearable, with annoyingly clichéd lines such as "toodles" and "okie-dokie artichokey," and is perhaps one of the least intimidating movie villains in recent memory.

And as the hero Daytona, Fogler doesn't wow. He also loses the limelight whenever he is in a scene with Hong, whose blindness jokes steal the show.

If it weren't for the fast-paced table-tennis action, Balls of Fury would be a total loss. Luckily, the movie is kept from total staleness by introducing plenty of awe-inspiring ball-bashing throughout, and whether the scenes are live-action or CG-created, the effect is impressive. But great action does not a good movie make. As it stands, Balls of Fury is nothing more than a poor man's Dodgeball with a different sport, a worse script and inferior actors.

aggro@umd.edu

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