Okay, so let’s see here, Ben Stiller has managed to star in a total of four movies so far this year including Along Came Polly, Starsky & Hutch, Envy and now Dodgeball. Oh yeah, he will also have a small part in Anchorman and will cap off the year with his follow-up sequel Meet the Fockers. Now, have you made it to the big time as an actor when you need more than one hand to count the movies you have been in for one year or is it better to pick your scripts wisely and do it right? Obviously Stiller is for the former, but once he begins to read the reviews for his films he may want to take a second look at the latter.
For so long the only synopsis available for Dodgeball basically said a small gym takes on a big gym in a game of dodgeball, and now that it has been updated, it doesn’t really matter because in the end that is all there is to it, despite the fact that they try to fill time with a couple of side stories that only make you wish they had said cut a half-hour prior.
With a running-time of approximately 90 minutes Dodgeball could have been scaled down to about a 5-10 minute sketch on SNL, but instead they put it on the big screen for the critics to beat up.
Tell me how many times you can show someone getting hit in the crotch or the head with a rubber ball and still call it funny. I am not saying I didn’t laugh during this film but the same jokes over and over again just proved to me once again that Stiller may be best left at home and out of the studio, or better yet include him on Saturday Night Live and let him pitch movie ideas that will one day become skits on the show.
It is troubling to me that it is starting to feel like studios are just throwing names into movies hoping that the name alone will draw in crowds, without any real attention to the story. I would have thought Stiller’s Something About Mary fame would have washed away by now, but apparently the man is still as hot as ever.
If you must see this flick, you will laugh, but with a running time of an hour and a half, with about 30 minutes to go you will be checking your watch and wondering just when it will all end.
