Considering Balls of Fury

We brought in the new year watching the mindless comedy Balls of Fury, and I laughed heartily.  I suppose if you are not familiar with some of the classic martial arts movies of the 70’s (particularly the Bruce Lee classic Enter the Dragon) and the show Kung Fu, you will be ‘lost’ and not find it particularly funny.

They take the major premise of those movies and switch the contest to ping pong.  The results are just stupidly funny, which was the objective I’m sure.  Here’s the goofy plot: Randy Daytona is a Def Leppard-loving teen competing in the 1988 Olympics when he meets disaster and drops out of competitive ping pong.  Fast-forward to the present when the FBI approaches him to penetrate a triad leader’s ping pong tournament.  The triad leader is the one who killed Randy’s dad.

But first he must regain form.  Enter the blind ping pong master played by James Hong to perfection.  He’s sort of a Master Po (Kung Fu) with a good-looking niece who plays some mean ping pong.  He makes the mistake of teaching a “round eye” and faces banishment from Chinatown.  This is basically stolen from the plot of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (Jason Scott Lee, who played Bruce Lee is also in this movie).  Randy must face the Dragon to vindicate his master.  It is here that Randy discovers real world of unsanctioned, underground ping pong.  It is here that he gains Feng’s attention, and an invite to the sudden death tournament.

Christopher Walken is at this zany best as Feng.  The story becomes increasingly absurd, and funny, filled with Walken’s deadpan delivery.  There is also a cameo by The King of Queens’ Spence (Patton Oswalt) as The Hammer.  This is lowball humor at its best, so to speak.  Some crude language, no nudity, and no point beyond having some laughs.  And sometimes you just need to laugh.