Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story   

Peter La Fleur: Vince Vaughn

Kate Veatch: Christine Taylor

White Goodman: Ben Stiller

Patches O'Houlihan: Rip Torn

Gordon: Stephen Root

Justin: Justin Long

Written and Directed by

Rawson Marshall Thurber

The greatest corny sports movie moment ever appears in The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, when Coach Mike Leak gets in front of the Astrodome crowd to lead them in a chant of "let them play."  There's a scene in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story that triumphantly recalls that past moment with the perfect blend of reverence, sarcasm, and humor.  Unfortunately, the rest of Dodgeball can't maintain that same comic sensibility and it remains inconsistent throughout. 

There are funny moments, even hilarious ones at times, that are too often followed with embarrassing dialogue and ridiculous situations that will leave you rolling your eyes rather than continuing your laughter.  The joke is almost always taken too far or stretched too thin, which only manages to minimize the effect of the original joke.  It's a shame, too, because a lot of the original jokes in this movie are good ones.

Vince Vaughn plays Peter La Fleur, an owner of a small gym, who is about to lose it to foreclosure, unless he can come up with $50,000.  His nemesis is White Goodman (Ben Stiller), the small and obnoxious owner of Globo Gym, a huge facility with the slogan "we're better than you and we know it."  Goodman is ready to take over the fledgling gym across the street and turn it into a parking structure as soon as La Fleur misses the deadline imposed on him to come up with the money he needs.

La Fleur is joined by his allotment of gym regulars that are all either out of shape, nerds, or lovable losers.  One of them, Gordon (Stephen Root), discovers that there is a national dodgeball tournament with the grand prize of $50,000.  The group forms a team for an outside chance at winning the money.  They are eventually joined by renowned coach Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn) and lawyer Kate Veatch (Christine Taylor).  O'Houlihan being an irascible and wheelchair-bound dodgeball legend, and Veatch being the former softball star with twice the arm of any other player and a growing affection for Peter. 

The story, however, doesn't really get going until Rip Torn makes his first appearance and the National Dodgeball Tournament gets underway.  Most of the film's laughs are generated from these two things after you have been forced to suffer through the laborious first act.

The main problem lies with the two leads.  Vaughn loses the sardonic persona he has created so well in previous films like Swingers and Old School.  He is just not as well suited to playing the straight man in a movie like this.  Meanwhile, Stiller is way too over-the-top as the insufferable gym rat to the point where he just becomes insufferable himself.  I can see what they are trying to do here by switching up from their usual roles, but there is a reason why it works better the other way around.   

Dodgeball manages to effectively skewer traditional sports movies with its moments of brief heroism experienced by each of the main characters.  These aspects of the film remain inspired, but it never sticks with that brand of humor.  Instead, it relies too much on silly innuendo and banal sight gags that provide more moments of squeamishness than hilarity.  It is a shame that a comedy has to resort to aiming low for a few laughs when it has shown the potential for so much more.