June 18, 2004 | With the arrival of his first feature, DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber must plead guilty to moviemaking while under the influence of the Farrelly Brothers, the filmmaking siblings who set new standards for rude comedy with Kingpin, Shallow Hal and There’s Something About Mary. The good news is, Thurber obviously learned his lessons well while studying the Farrelly oeuvre. Indeed, much like the best work of his role models, DodgeBall gleefully commingles slapstick and scatology, satire and sentiment, in a free-wheeling farce aimed at making audiences laugh until they’re thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
The functional plot, which is little more than an excuse to link clumps of funny business, is the latest in a seemingly endless line of smoothies-versus-slobs revenge fantasies. In one corner, we have Peter La Fleur (Vince Vaughn), an under-achieving slacker whose only source of income is his gone-to-seed Average Joe’s Gym; on the other side, there is White Goodman (Ben Stiller), an overbearing entrepreneur who owns and operates an ultra-fashionable fitness center. Partly to avenge past slights, but mostly because he’s a greedy egomaniac, Goodman seeks to acquire La Fleur’s gymnasium, so he can demolish the building and construct a parking lot in its place. To keep the bank from foreclosing on his property, La Fleur must raise $50,000 in 30 days.
Desperate times call for desperate measures: Forced to assume responsibility – for the first time in his life, no doubt – La Fleur forms a competitive dodgeball team with a few of the misfits who frequent Average Joe’s. The line-up: Gordon (Stephen Root of Office Space), a bespectacled aficionado of obscure sports; Justin (Justin Long), a scrawny high-schooler who dreams of impressing a perky cheerleader; Dwight (Chris Williams), La Fleur’s wisecracking assistant; Owen (Joel David Moore), a gawky geek who trolls Internet dating services in a vain search of companionship; and Steve the Pirate (Alan Tudyk), a boisterous oddball who acts and dresses like… like… well, like a pirate, actually.
Naturally, Goodman assembles his own team of bigger, stronger and more lethally accurate dodgeballers — including, memorably, Missi Pyle as a unibrowed, snaggletoothed Eastern European ace. Fortunately, La Fleur’s team gets help from an unexpected source: Kate Veatch (Christine Taylor), an attorney hired by the bank to inspect La Fleur’s books. She joins the Average Joe team to support the underdogs – and, more important, to punish Goodman for his sleazily aggressive attempts to woo her. Knowing that Stiller and Taylor are married in real life somehow makes their scenes together all the more amusing.
The Average Joe team is whipped into shape – literally — by Patches O’Houlihan (Rip Torn in his robust dirty old man mode), a wheelchair-bound taskmaster who barks insults, growls orders and, when all else fails, tosses wrenches instead of dodgeballs as part of his training regimen. One thing leads to another, at a suitably zippy pace, and the good guys hit Las Vegas to compete for a $50,000 grand prize in a Dodgeball Championship. The event is telecast by ESPN 8 – “The Ocho” – and covered by play-by-by announcers (Gary Cole, Jason Bateman) who are hilariously dead-on parodies of similar real-life commentators. I don’t have to tell you that the Average Joes plays against Goodman’s team in the final round, do I?
DodgeBall takes at least 20 minutes or so to achieve full speed, and occasionally sputters and misfires after getting off the ground. When it does work, however, it is explosively and shamelessly funny, earning guffaws with everything from dodgeballing girl scouts and faux training films to wacky cameos by familiar figures. Former Baywatch hunk David Hasselhoff pops up to confirm your worst suspicions about his appeal to German fans, and Chuck Norris and William Shatner are good sports about serving more or less as sight gags. Champion bicyclist Lance Armstrong, of all people, turns out to be the biggest laugh-getter among the cameo stars, even while he maintains a straight face and a serious tone.
As La Fluer, Vaughn breezes through most of the movie with engaging what-the-hell insouciance. And to his credit, he manages to sustain his comic rhythms during the inevitable scenes in which his character seeks “redemption” through selfless behavior. Sporting a power mullet, a Fu Manchu mustache and a semi-buff physique, Stiller comes off as a live-action cartoon, which is pretty much what the role of Goodman requires. It’s worth noting, however, that in the very last scene, between the end of the closing credits and the flash of the MPAA rating, Stiller returns for a final rant that hints at a genuine contempt for the audience. What makes the sequence so ineffably weird is its ambiguity: You can’t tell for certain whether Stiller merely is acting crazy in character, or if he’s really saying, in effect, “Geez, I can’t believe you people actually laughed at this!”
Thurber – who first attracted attention with his outrageous “Terry Tate: Office Linebacker” TV commercials – does his best to soft-pedal gross-out gags and full-bore raunch while at the same time pushing Dodgeball into outer the limits of PG-13 propriety. The only people likely to be offended by the movie are those who despise dodgeball itself. After all, this so-called “sport” is not-so-fondly remembered by many former grade- and high-school geeks (including quite a few who grew up to be film critics) as a source of physical pain and traumatic humiliation. Wisely, however, DodgeBall taps into any long-repressed resentments that may stem from being pummeled with rubber balls in playgrounds and schoolyards. As its full title implies, DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story is a tale of underdogs who have their day by getting even and laughing last.
