Starting a sentence with “The problem with…” usually means there’s more than one problem. Take streaming content, for instance. Whether it is the way in which a platform categorizes a movie or trying to navigate between genres and different movies, you end up wasting a ton of time trying to find something to watch. Streaming can be frustrating and cruel that way. As someone who has an absurd amount of physical media – with movies occupying Bankers Boxes on top of Bankers Boxes – sometimes it is just more convenient clicking on a streaming app and finding a movie to watch.
That’s what I’ve been doing during this time of Corona. I go to work. I come home. Later, I find a movie or television series to watch. Okay, I made the mistake and binged Tiger King. On Sundays I’ve been programming a different Film Noir release as part of my “Sunday Noir” series. I’ve watched classic titles I’ve neglected to see before (ahem, what I call a “secret shame”). But there have also been re-watches.
Even though I had check marked many titles to watch later, earlier this month I picked a comedy I’ve seen several times over, but haven’t watched in a while: Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.
Rawson Marshall Thurber’s feature debut arrived during summer 2004 opening opposite the latest Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks collaboration The Terminal. A sports comedy against an unbeatable pairing, and yet Dodgeball was the victor. Though, it is a tad ironic for my quarantine viewing I pick a comedy about saving a local gym at a time when gyms are closed to the public. And if you’ve seen Tom Hanks in The Terminal, then you know he plays a foreigner who becomes stuck at New York’s JFK airport; he’s denied entry to the U.S. and is unable to return to his homeland because of a military coup. Not quite socially distant but not that far removed.
Dodgeball isn’t high art or highbrow. The comedy lives up to one of the mottos of the recreational sport. It aims low. That’s alright; I needed a laugh. Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and the rest of the crew get it done in less than 90 minutes. (Though, do stick around for a post-credit scene where Stiller has gone on a junk-food bender as part of losing his health fitness chain.)
It’s oddly comforting finding pleasure seeing Justin Long take a wrench to the face from crotchety Patches O’Houlihan (Rip Torn), who gruffly spews coaching wisdom like, “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.” How far we have come from the days of Mickey telling Rocky that he’s going to make him eat lightning and crap thunder.
Dodgeball is such a fun comedy and perfect comfort viewing because it involves teamwork and banding together to save a small business and goes about it in the most absurd fashion. The stakes sound enormous – raising $50,000 in 30 days – but there’s a serendipitous solution: win a Las Vegas dodgeball tournament. The first-place prize is, gasp, $50,000. But when Globo Gym’s owner White Goodman (Stiller) gets wind at what Average Joe’s owner Peter La Fleur (Vaughn) is doing, he forms his own dodgeball team comprised of athletic trainers plus Russia’s hulking Fran Stalinovskovichdaviddivichski.
Some of the humor is dated, I will admit. But the laugh retention rate for most comedies is like landing a joke – hit or miss. Plus, your sense of humor changes, and movies you thought were hilarious don’t hold up after scrutiny. Not with Dodgeball. I find it to be the best “Frat Pack” comedy released during a period that also included Old School, Starsky & Hutch, Anchorman, and Wedding Crashers.
I mean we get a character that thinks he’s a pirate (Alan Tudyk), another that was Milton in Office Space (Stephen Root), there’s Marsha Brady from The Brady Bunch Movie (Christine Taylor), Gary Cole and Jason Bateman as the scene-stealing commentators for the dodgeball tournament, and appearances by David Hasselhoff, William Shatner, and Chuck Norris! And showing up to shame Peter to rejoin the team after he quits is Lance Armstrong, the very definition of testicular(?) fortitude. That’s the great thing about playing dodgeball. All it takes is one…ball.
Considering there’s no baseball, basketball, or hockey to watch, you might as watch a fictional underdog story where Vince Vaughn towers over Ben Stiller by at least a foot, hear the perfect music drop when one of the Average Joe’s team members sees Fran Stalinovsk…whatever for the first time, and Cotton McKnight (Cole) and Pepper Brooks (Bateman) telling it like is as commentators for ESPN 8: The Ocho.
“Looks like it’s gonna be a two-on-one, a ménage à trois of pain.”
“Usually you pay double for that kind of action, Cotton.”
If you’ve never seen Dodgeball , or if it’s been a while, grab some snacks and grab life by the balls in the comfort of your own home.