Any movie critic can tell you what a newly released DVD is about & spoil the ending for you. I plan to ruin your entire DVD watching experience by highlighting it's flaws, it's missteps, it's examples of poor editing, casting, and point out the ridiculous holes in the plot. If you're cynical, you'll appreciate this valuable service I'm providing. If you're easily impressed, then don't say I didn't warn you.  - Mean Jean

Leave it to Hollywood to transform something as wildly unpredictable as a sports championship into something so banal that even a sports movie antiFan can diagram the formula. "Dodgeball" follows the rollercoaster thrill ride® journey of the underdog sports team, (formula #1) 'The Average Joe's Gym' in their quest to come up with enough money (#2) to save their gym from foreclosure (#3) as well as from being bought out by the big, bad wolf gym, Globo's (#4) at the same coincidental moment in time as the World Dodgeball Tournament is going on (#5), offering the exact coincidental amount of money needed to pay off the mortgage (#6). I'm a crabby critic, not a real estate lawyer or banker. (According to this movie, girls like that dress like they are trolling for men & they have plenty of time to lounge around decorating the scenery.) Anyway, in my layperson's opinion I think Globo's Gym skipped a few steps in the 'buying AJ's Gym's 2nd mortgage' subplot. Maybe I was too busy scribbling notes & missed the crucial 'federal seizure & auctioning the gym equipment off' scene, or the 'federal marshals depositing AJ'sG's worldly possessions onto the sidewalk & federally padlocking the door' scenes. Oh well, there were so many competing & irrelevant subplots flopping around on the movieland beach gasping for air that I probably missed the good parts of this movie. All I managed to catch was what I thought was bad editing, stolen ideas, & lame sports movie clichés weighing down this movie. OK, lemme see if I can remember them all, as well as where they fall in my patented 'sports movie formula' counting scheme for those of you keeping track.

Dodgeball steals many of 'its' ideas from many different movies, including reaching back as far back as ol' Bill Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet and the whole forbidden love story angle (#7), they just update it for a sports movie. Good thing! Every idiot knows sports movies are the best kind to take a date to, Hollywood wants us morons to obediently start a new trend with this, apparently. Such originality! The rival gym owner also desires the fair lass (#8) who, dutifully obeys the laws of current PC wisdom (I should get bonus points for thinking of such a funny oxymoron as 'PC wisdom' !!!) not to date clients. In my opinion the cardboard cutout featured later in the flick offers more depth than any of the fake humans cluttering the landscape, and that's a much more compelling reason for her to not date anyone in this live action cartoon. Lest I forget, there's the dramatically coincidental coach who materializes out of nowhere, omnisciently sensing the need for his expert coaching (#9). 'of all the dodgeball courts in all the world, he rolled into mine... ' That's a "Casablanca" ripoff. Too bad the section dealing with borrowed movie ideas is so far away yet! 

The writers that worked on this screenplay don't want you to forget this is a story about an underdog, ok? They point this out on the DVD case, and refer to this truth until it approaches brainwashing levels in the dialogue, and fake sports commentary during the quick, tension free playoffs on the dodgeball court. What exactly is an underdog? Is it the team no one cares about? Apparently it is, under the sports movie cliché makeover department of the "Cornball" writing team. I guess when the potential target audience is 10 years old, the shorter the movie the better, even if it means character development gets sacrificed on the altar of expediency. For the life of me it was impossible to care about these fake characters and their ridiculous, coincidental, only in a movie quest. I found myself rooting for Ben Stiller's hyperbole of a slimy gym owner to win. Poor guy, making so many movies this year he's just too tired to make good decisions about what movies to star in, working away as hard & fast as he can to put food on the table before his 15 minutes are up, obliviously ignoring the savage opinions of movie critics everywhere in his real life quest to provide for his family.  I tell ya, it's enough to inspire you to cheer him on! 

But back to the wonder of talkies. What else was borrowed for this movie, besides the "Barber Shop 2" story line, copied almost verbatim so as to include the bad guy inhabiting the building across the street with much nicer equipment? There's also the nod to Woody Allen's "Small Time Crooks", a truly funny movie, in the scene which has Mr. Hyperbole pretending to peruse a dictionary to impress Juliet. The wardrobe & hair are from "Starskey & Hutch" (poor Ben is so tired he's getting confused about what movie he's in! Give him a nap, somebody, quick!) The special delivery package switch from "Meet the Parents" (Ben, we know. "Meet the Fockers" is coming to DVD soon, we know. Don't worry, Punkin, we'll watch it, settle down a little bit!) The Steve Segal-ish dramatic motivation to win the final, the "Dumbo the Flying Elephant" moment near the end when they lose the magic coach, the 'Matrix' moments- it's all here for your enjoyment, 40 years of classics all rolled into one.

Hmmm. What now? The ridiculous & irrelevant subplots? What on earth the relevance of the whole cheerleading contest at the same time in the same place as the dodgeball competition escapes me. I think the sad results of a one joke premise attempting to flesh itself out, but ending up wasting away is a hard thing to watch. Ok, how about something more realistic & upbeat? Like a walk on cameo by Lance Armstrong, who cares enough to pep talk the loser, I mean the underdog into getting back out there. Yeah, just like in real life! I don't know about you, but I just can't count how many times I've been sitting around in a bar trying to get drunk & feel sorry for myself when ol' Lance just happened to pop in & say exactly what I need to hear to get me moving in the right direction. If that guy doesn't win a Nobel Peace Prize soon, I will be shocked. I mean if he doesn't that'll be up in the Nobel Hall of Shame alongside their snubbing of Albert Einstein & his General Theory of Relativity due to his spiteful insistence on being Jewish in the political climate in Europe leading up to WW2. But enough of that! History isn't fun, tearing apart movies is! Where to go next? Oh yeah! How about the many subplots featuring basically the same guy in two characters? I kept thinking the geek high school kid & the geek grown up were the same guy! No, I guess they are close relatives, though. They look the same, talk the same, have the same hair & same problems. I thought it was an editing glitch that in one scene the high school girl drags him (hs geek) off, as she protests that he has no time to tell anyone, and in the very next scene, there he (grown up geek) is in the locker room lamenting life. Talk about horrible editing, OH!! Waitaminnit!! It's 2 different guys, pay attention home audience, don't get fooled! That's why they like a high school girl as well as a Romanian girl- because it's 2 different guys, not one schizophrenic guy! Either I should work the pause button a little better when I'm taking notes, or Hollywood's sloppy 
carelessness & inattention to details is adversely affecting me, help me!!! 

Rip Torn, Hank Azaria's cameo & the red haired guy from "Knights Tale" are the best this movie has to offer. Considering that Ben Stiller stars in it, that's a pretty sad factoid, eh? If I had to do it over again, I would have waited till the video store had this movie in stock & rented this rather than bought it in my impatient desire to save you some money. Take my advice, rent this one rather than buy it. 

(but if you must click here to buy the DVD)