College Downtime Movie Review
Written by Raffman - June 24th, 2004

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)

Starring: Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Christine Taylor, Jason Bateman, Rip Torn
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurbur
Rated: PG-13
Rating: * * 1/2 (2.5 stars)

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After seeing the trailor for Dodgeball, I deemed this movie a must-see - especially after I saw that the cast included Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, "Milton" and "Bill Lumburg" from "Office Space", and Christine Taylor. If you've seen "Zoolander", "Office Space", or "Old School" then you'll be familiar with this movie's cast and storyline. Many of the same jokes are taken from them, some more subtle than others. While this movie won't win any Acadamy Awards, it is still very, very funny and is worth seeing.

The movie involves the battle between two competing Fitness Gyms, "Average Joes" which is owned and run by Vince Vaughn, and "Globo-Gym" which is owned and ran by the hilarious, Ben Stiller. To sum up the storyline, Vaughn's gym is $50,000 deep in debt and is being bought out by the corporate-sized Globo-Gym. Needing to raise money, Vaughn and a few of his loyal gym members decide to compete in "ESPN 8's National Dodgeball Tournament" in Las Vegas, with the winning team receiving a surprising $50,000. Not wasting any time, the movie jumps right into the Dodgeball action without looking back, and on the side tries adding in a few mediocre sub-plots to keep things fresh.

As far as the characters go, some are excellent and some are downright horrible. Ben Stiller does a phenomenal job playing the pyschotic bodybuilder/fitness freak, although he tends to go overboard some of the time with a lot of the same material. Now to those of you who liked "Zoolander" than you'll love him in this movie; if you didn't like "Zoolander" than you'll be glad to hear "Dodgeball" is only an hour and a half long. Vince Vaughn does a respectable job at his role, although it was hard for me to see him as a nice, friendly, "help out the community", "get the girl in the end" guy. I still saw him as the Speaker City owner from "Old School", so maybe it's just me. The rest of the characters were all above-average for the most part.

Like I said in the beginning, this movie is very, very funny. While many of the jokes are way overused, there are three hilarious ones to every old one. Again, Ben Stiller to me can get a little overboard in his roles but if you love that personality than you're in for a treat. To me, seeing girl scouts and old guys getting slammed in the face with dodgeballs is hilarious, which is what most of this comedy consists of. The actual dodgeball scenes are very comparable in their style of humor to "Baseketball", if you have ever seen that. One thing to note is if you've seen the trailor, and I'm sure you have if you're reading this, then you've already seen some of the best jokes that the movie has to offer. While that fact should not stop you from seeing this film, it does hinder it a little bit.

Overall this movie is very funny and is worth the outrageous theatre prices to see; don't wait until it comes out on video. As a warning, this movie is very short and like I said earlier, if you hated Ben Stiller in Zoolander (and the movie altogether for that matter) then "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story" is not for you. It is a great summer comedy though, and is worth seeing. It's especially worth seeing if you bring as hot a date as I did too!

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