Dodgeball: Coming to HBO 8 (The H-B-"Ocho") in the Near Future

Here at BillyBlog, we are shamelessly behind the times when it comes to the modern cinema. We have to rely on DVR and the occasional wayward DVD to keep us in tune with the ways of Hollywood. We also have to stop referring to ourselves in the first person plural.

Saturday Night brought forth from our Time Warner DVR a little film called Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. Never let them tell you BillyBlog's not tapped into the pulse of America.


What a silly, silly movie. I guess no one in their right mind would go to see this with the expectation of serious high drama, so silliness is okay. The movie actually skewers the whole genre of "underdog" pictures and does so amazingly well. We all know how the film will end: good guys win, lead guy gets lead girl, bad guy is shamelessly humiliated.

Roger Ebert said "Ben Stiller, overact[s] to the point of apoplexy as White Goodman; his manic performance is consistently funny."

Ebert's partner in crime, Richard Roeper called the movie "... a hilariously worthy successor to the great goofball comedies of the late Seventies and early Eighties, movies like Caddyshack and Meatballs." Hmmm. High praise, but as a reverer of Caddyshack, I think a bit too hasty to lump this in with such company. Meatballs, maybe. Caddyshack, no.

I mean, high acting it's not, but the sight gags, one-liners, and special cameos carry the film far enough to cross the finish line without self-imploding in a pinata of tired movie cliches (tildes and accents unavailable at this time).

The scene with Lance Armstrong in the airport, for example, is classic deadpan brilliance.

All in all, a fun little jaunt in the Land of Films that are Funny but Will Never Win Any Awards. Wait, sorry, Ben Stiller won the "Best Villain" honor in the 2005 MTV Movie Awards. He was also nominated for a Razzie. Then again, it grossed $114 million with only a $20 million budget.

Like I said, tapped into the pulse of America, albeit a little late.