When I say "the right person" what I should say is "do you appreciate completely absurd situations in a movie or do you require some form of reality in your entertainment?" I can be either. I appreciate some comedy the same way little kids do and I hope I never lose that side of my sense of humor.
So yeah, if you can appreciate the ridiculous, this movie might be for you.
The movie stars Dan Fogler as Randy Daytona and for me anyway, i don't recall seeing Fogler in really anything else. He is a pretty good actor and the fact that he "takes the piss" out of his own appearance is part of the reason why this movie is so great. He is extremely out of shape and has crazy sideburns and weird hair yet he thinks he is the shit.
Randy Daytona was a ping-pong prodigy who seemed unstoppable in his youth as he was one of the youngest participants ever in the Summer Olympics. He suffers an injury and embarrassment in the Olympics (ping-pong injury haha) and ends up leaving the competitive side of things for 19 years.
One day an FBI agent needs his help getting to an international criminal named "Feng" played by Christopher Walken and the only way they can get a man inside the evil compound is if someone qualifies for his annual black market ping-pong tournament (see what i mean about an absurd storyline?)
The problem is, Randy has lost most of his mojo and needs the training of ping-pong masters to get his game back up to scratch. He enrolls at a ping-pong academy in Chinatown that never under any circumstances accepts "gwai-do" into the academy (Gwai-do means "white people" in the movie, I have no idea if it means that in Chinese.) He slowly gets his skills back under the tutilidge of a blind Chinese ping-pong master and his very attractive niece, Maggie(played by the always wonderful MaggieQ.)
I know I am spoiling a lot of the film so i guess i will leave it at that. There is plenty that goes on, particularly during his training at the Chinatown academy that will bring on some laughs. This sort of completely over the top humor is something that appeals to me every now and then.
The actual tournament at Feng's mansion is pretty great and one of the other competitors is another favorite comedy actor of mine, Terry Crews. he plays the role of Freddy "Fingers" Wilson
It should come as very little surprise that the critics were quite brutal on this film. However, if anyone goes into a movie called "Balls of Fury" looking for Golden Globe nomination opportunities, than that person is an idiot.
I laughed a lot and think that the people who made this movie probably had a lot of fun while doing so. I can't give it huge ratings because well, some of it is just too silly, but i suppose that is always a tough fine line to not cross when toying with the absurd.
