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Former child ping pong prodigy Randy Daytona is recruited by the FBI to go undercover at the world's most dangerous underground table tennis tournament. To get to the championship he is trained by blind guru Mr Wong and his beautiful niece Maggie. Only then will he be able to face his father's killer, the deadly Feng, to seek his revenge…
Director Robert Ben Garant makes a slightly more successful return to the screen after the dreadful "Reno 911! Miami" movie with this predictable but fun sports film pastiche. As with most of its ilk, it begins with a mocked-up sports programme that shows plucky young challenger Randy Daytona about to take on his greatest challenge. This comes at the 1984 LA Olympics, so is replete with bad hair and worse clothes. The sports commentary itself is well observed and the director throws in some nice absurdities, such as English subtitles for Chinese spoken language which are followed by Chinese subtitles for English. It harks back to movies like "Airplane!" But there are more misses than hits in terms of jokes. Garant's timing is often sloppy as he lets jokes go on too long and he cuts the music so you can hear them, which makes too much of some of them. Many of the sight gags are too obvious, such as the slapstick involving blind table tennis guru Mr Wong. You know he's going to walk into things and fall down an open lift shaft.
Spoof is layered upon spoof with Bruce Lee movies featuring most heavily in both the training sequences and in the set-up of Feng's lair. Okay, it's not on an island, but it is basically the villain's den from "Enter the Dragon". Obviously the courtesans the bad guy offers are men and there are armies of men practising ping-pong
when the competitors arrive, but you get the drift. Christopher's Walken is dressed like Fu Manchu by way of Ming the Merciless, causing Randy's blind mentor to ask "Does he still dress like he shops at Elton John's garage sale?"
Garant's visual style lacks finesse, probably because he cut his teeth shooting for TV. The movie looks cheap because of the grainy, muddy film stock he uses. The backdrops are either anonymous streets and alleys dressed to look like a rough part of town or cheap sets built on soundstages. Most of the money has gone into CGI, though not of the type you'd really notice - it's all the table tennis balls that are flying about, which explains the various actors' proficiency at the sport. There are some rather impressive explosions and some nods to action movie conventions such as a slow-motion leap and bullet-time shots of the sport. There are also plenty of montages that show Randy's progress against his evermore ludicrous opponents. So it's a sporadically entertaining but predictable film.
The screenplay by Garant and Thomas Lennon is nothing new. Much of it is a riff on "The Karate Kid", where Randy has to be tutored by a wisdom-spouting sensai with unorthodox techniques. So we see him playing ping pong with wooden spoons and swatting bees with a table tennis bat to improve his speed. There are shades of super-spy spoofs like "Austin Powers" and "Get Smart", in the espionage subplot that sees Randy team up with an FBI agent. This leads to lots of obvious jokes about hiding bugs up their bums and sneaking around. The reason the film fails is because it has a split focus, so it tries to make jokes at too many things without following a story. A simple underdog tale would have worked. Instead we have a strange mish-mash of two genres that needs three endings to resolve itself. It leads to uneven pacing throughout the ninety minute running time as we belly-flop between the two.
The characterisation is anaemic. Randy is a fat slob with great talent, Mr Wong is the usual harsh taskmaster played for comic effect, Maggie is a smoking hot love interest and Feng is the usual OTT villain. But there isn't enough to Randy's opponents - most of them only last for a single gag, such is the nature of the death match format. The gag ratio is high, but there are too many old jokes. For instance, a mysterious stranger appears to offer Randy the chance to compete at the tournament, but after delivering his message, he slinks back to ask for directions. The dialogue has its moments with a highlight being when Feng says to a henchman "Kill them both, we're missing Antiques Roadshow…" which wins point for sheer incongruity. Though Mr Wong's fortune cookie truisms could have been sharper "It is better to die like a tiger than live like a pussy…" is about the best.
If fat always equalled funny, then tubby Dan Fogler would be near the top of the comedy heap. Sadly that isn't the case and as Randy Daytona he's a fairly average slapstick stooge. His timing isn't great but neither is it awful, though he has a tendency to miss one joke in three by about half a beat. He looks the part with his permed wig and his girly screaming and crying are good for a couple of laughs. But he doesn't have the wit or sparkle to be among the comedy greats.
Christopher Walken is clearly having the time of his life as Feng and that's what carries the role. There's not much more to it than the ludicrous Ming the Merciless wardrobe and Walken's trademark staccato delivery, but he has good timing and a twinkle in his eye, which is enough. Thomas Lennon has an equally good time as East German ping pong champion Karl Wolfschtagg. He's all leather shorts and crotch-hugging unitards with a peroxide flat-top and chewy accent. It's a gross stereotype but an effective and recognisable one and Lennon plays the part with verve. James Hong shows he has good comic timing as the embittered Mr Wong. Maggie Q is a striking, sinewy love interest, who gets to show off her martial arts skills as the inventively named Maggie.
The original music by Randy Edelman has the measure of the movie and plays it straight. Randy's Olympic semi-final is introduced by tense, high brass and forbidding strings that play up the importance of the match. Randy's first opponent during his comeback (a tubby little man known as The Hammer) is accompanied by crunching rock guitar. Mr Wong is represented by the usual reed flutes for an inscrutable mentor. Swelling victorious strings come in at appropriate moments. Feng's lair is introduced with Chinese-style strings and flutes and plenty of military snare for his army of table tennis players. Feng himself merits his own string themes and Randy's first match in the competition is covered by frantic beats with rising brass and string motifs. The action sequences are partnered by 60s-style spy movie music replete with echoing electric guitar and brass or heroic brass and string themes that are heavy on the drums. However, I could have done without the Def Leppard end credits rock that goes on too long and fails to be funny.
"Balls of Fury" is a silly but unoriginal pastiche of the sports movie genre that shoots itself in the foot by failing to stick to a single story. Both the director and star's comic timing are off, which curtails the opportunities for belly laughs. The writing is patchy, with poor characterisation and abrupt shifts in tack. But if you're in the mood for something unashamedly daft, then there are worse things you could watch. If you don't expect anything earth-shattering or innovative, there's enough here to enjoy.
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Jan 14th, 2008
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