Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Vince Vaughn plays Peter LaFleur, the owner of Average Joe’s Gym, a mom-and-pop type health gym which doesn’t force its fitness ideals on its customers. Instead, it lets them choose the regiment they feel like doing. This is possibly due to LaFleur’s laid-back management style, but nonetheless, financially, it isn’t working. Across the street, the behemoth Globo-Gym run by White Goodman (Ben Stiller) stands and is just waiting to buy up Average Joe’s and monopolize the market. As a result, Vaughn needs to come up with $50,000 to save his business. As luck would have it, a dodgeball competition with a top prize of $50,000 is going to begin in Las Vegas. So LaFleur and his rag-tag team of workers begin on this journey filled with dodging, ducking, dipping, diving, and dodging.

Dodgeball is the name of the game in this movie. It’s this film’s biggest plot mover. When it strays from it, the movie slows and most of it is just forced laughter. Even the motivation for dodgeball, Globo Gym’s acquisition of Average Joe’s, is a non-starter. But once the training begins and the balls go flying, the physical comedy is at its best and the one-liners are sharp. It’s led by a great performance from Rip Torn as the wheelchair bound former dodgeball champion Patches O’Houlihan. Also of note are the cameos in the film (Lance Armstrong, William Shatner, Chuck Norris, among others), which contribute greatly to the film’s comedic success. Overall, this overly physical and sometimes ironic comedy is certainly one of the funnier movies to come out in recent memory. 3 stars