Because "Plastic Balls Filled with Gas" Wouldn't Sell As Many Tickets

Jon, Casey, Jim (a friend and my chiropractor) and I went to see Balls of Fury this last weekend. Two words:

1. High
2. Larious

I'm a sucker for Christopher Walken. I can watch anything with him in it. Well, almost anything. I still refuse to watch Kangaroo Jack. Walken could have sold the movie to me on his merit alone, but the other scenes in the trailers looked funny too.

They were. And then some.

I was laughing through nearly the entire movie. Walken does not disappoint. First, we get Robert DeNiro playing a gay sky pirate in Stardust (GO SEE IT!) and now Walken playing a gay warlord with a passion for the Orient and as the Chinese say, Ping Pong. Directed by Ben Garant, of The State, Viva Variety, and Reno 911 fame, there were plenty of familiar faces in the cast, such as Thomas Lennon, playing the ball-busting Olympic champion from Germany, and Kerry Kenney, playing a Reno showgirl looking unsurprisingly like Wiegel under cover as a Reno showgirl.

For my money, no one curses in Chinese better than James Hong. I leaned over to Jon during his first scene and made the comment that losing Hong would be the end of a Hollywood institution. Who else is going to play the old Chinese dude? Speaking of Chinese (okay, it's a stretch, she's part-Vietnamese, but she plays Chinese in the movie!) Maggie Q looked stunning throughout the movie and had her share of funny scenes.

Our main man, Dan Fogler, is new to me, but man can he take a nutshot, repeatedly, much to my amusement. Way to take a few for the team, Fogler! His handler, however, made me sad. I believe George Lopez has real comedy potential, if he would just stop letting them pigeon-hole him into the tired stereotype. As a Latino actor in a comedy, he had literally two choices for a line once he starts firing a machine gun. I bet you can guess them before you read them:

1. Say hello to my lil' fren'!
2. You wanna play rough? Le's play rough!
   

Ohhh, which one did he pick? The suspense is all suspenseful! Who cares! C'mon! The Scarface references were old in the 80's, can we just let them rest now?

The cast was full of other notables, such as Jason Scott Lee, Aisha Tyler, Terry Crews, Robert Patrick, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, David Koechner, Patton Oswalt, and Masi Oka. Go ahead, click on 'em. You won't know half of them without seeing a picture, but then you'll be all, "Ohhh, that guy!"

So I admit, I went in to the movie expecting to be mildly entertained by Walken's antics and came out saying, "That could very well be the best movie about Ping Pong I've ever seen." Of course, Jim countered by saying, "It could also be the worst." Touche. It was extremely funny, though. Funny in a stupid way, but I'm delightfully low-brow, so it works for me. I'll definitely pick this up on DVD for repeated viewings as well.

I give Balls of Fury five out of five painful nut shots on a scale I just made up that doesn't mean anything. Hah! You thought I was going for the obvious five balls out of five balls, didn't you! You can't predict me, I'm all-um-unpredictable.

And thus, I bid you toodles.

P.S. Diedrich Bader as a male sex slave? Brilliant!

Movie Review Bonanza!

I was going to write up my usual take on the movies I’ve seen this month, but I’ve posted a ton today already and things are about to pick up here at work – I mean, um, I would never blog at work, that would be an ineffective use of company time and inappropriate use of company property! Um, anyway, here’s my abbreviated take on the latest cinematic adventures I’ve viewed.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Fitting bookend to the trilogy. Nothing above and beyond the first two that makes this one really stand out. It was an entertaining piratical romp. Rush and Knightley make this one worth watching. Of course, Stacy would have you believe that Depp made it worth watching, but while his Sparrow is entertaining, he doesn't do it for me.
Three out of Four Jolly Rogers

Shrek the Third
Meyer’s Shrek is wearing on me. He was the least entertaining character. Luckily his supporting cast of fairytale friends hit the laughs often. Add in a dash of Python players in the form of Cleese and Idol, some delightful Julie Andrews, and a couple of rousing speeches to sway the villains one way or another, and you get a decent movie. I did like the second one better, though. For the record, nothing beats Snow White lilting to the woodland creatures in a voice straight out of the original Disney movie before launching into Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song.
Seven and a Half out of Fourteen Jellied Eyeballs

Surf’s Up
Surprisingly good! I expected more of the standard CGI schlock that has littered cinema screens in the wake of Pixar’s gems. However, this one succeeded where others have failed miserably. The voice cast really did it for me. I love Diedrich Bader’s work and having him reprise his character from Napoleon Dynamite was perfect. Speaking of Napoleon, Dynamite himself gave a great performance as the hapless stoner chicken. Jeff Bridges basically played the Dude in penguin form, so that was cool. James Woods does great voice over work. I loved Brian Posehn as the older brother. The LaBeouf played the lead character, but I find that lead character voices in the CGI movies all sound alike, so I didn’t realize until I looked him up.
Nine out of Ten Chum Buckets