DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story

2004 "Grab life by the ball."
6.7| 1h32m| PG-13| en| More Info
Released: 18 June 2004 Released
Producted By: 20th Century Fox
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

When megalomaniacal White Goodman, the owner of a trendy, high-end fitness center, makes a move to take over the struggling local gym run by happy-go-lucky Pete La Fleur, there's only one way for La Fleur to fight back: dodgeball. Aided by a dodgeball guru and Goodman's attorney, La Fleur and his rag-tag team of underdogs launch a knock-down, drag-out battle in which the winner takes all.

Genre

Comedy

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Director

Rawson Marshall Thurber

Production Companies

20th Century Fox

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DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story Audience Reviews

Artivels Undescribable Perfection
SoTrumpBelieve Must See Movie...
Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.
Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
MovieDude If you need something fun to watch and enjoy the underdog/good vs evil storyline then this movie will tick all your boxes. Had to review this as I don't believe the 6.7 rating is fair considering the laughs had during the movie. Sure Lance Armstrong is in it and now seems totally miscast but the guy still won the Tour multiple times with no healthy dodgeballs of his own.
Michael Lysaght So this is a very basic story. Struggling gym is about to go bankrupt, enters a dodgeball tournament to earn a cash price, and has to oppose Ben Stiller and his ego.See, who needs wordy essays? Not that this is a bad film, but really, most of the humour derives from people being injured by projectiles being launched at them at high velocities. That and Ben Stiller's character who is essentially Ben Stiller if he snorted a little too much cocaine.The characters have humorous backstories, apart from the token black guy who is just left to wisecrack half the time. Vince Vaughn plays the fairly laid back manager of his failing gym, taunted by Ben Stiller's character, a fitness obsessed lunatic who attempts to seize the property.Fairly gratuitous gags, but mildly entertaining. The gimmick gets old after a while though.
jimbo-53-186511 Peter LaFleur (Vince Vaughan) is the owner of Average Joe's Gym which is located next to Globo Gym which is a much larger multi-chain gym owned by obnoxious and self-obsessed White Goodman (Ben Stiller). When LaFleur discovers that he has 30 days to pay off $50,000 he panics and his first attempt at raising some quick cash fails. One of the members of his gym sees an advert in a magazine advertising a Dodgeball competition and the prize for winning the competition is $50,000. Seeing this as being their only option to earn that amount of cash in the time frame required, LaFleur and his gym members form a team and get trained by former Dodgeball champion Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn). However, when Goodman gets wind that LaFleur is entering into the Dodgeball championship he assembles his own crack team and enters the competition himself to win the money and put an end to LaFleur's hopes of saving his gymnasium.The start of the film is quite impressive with Stiller's monologue being a parody of the sort of thing that you'd expect to see on Teleshopping or QVC. This aspect is funny as I myself don't take a lot of what these channels say seriously and I can see that this was the effect that was trying to be achieved here. The film then shifts focus on to Vaughan and it's clear to see that he's a pleasant enough person, but clearly has no idea how to run a business. The problems for me started when the film started to establish the actual plot....Once the plot kicks in then it becomes fairly obvious that writer and director Rawson Marshall Thurber has gone for very easy targets in order to generate laughs (most of the 'laughs' on offer here stem from seeing people being hit with a ball). OK you may argue that it's a film about Dodgeball and that's the point. Fair enough... I would expect some of the laughs to stem from this, but surely a better scripted film would have us laughing at the characters for what they say as well as what they do. I'm not a fan of comedies that seem to just rely on physical humour as I think it's lazy and sadly this really is a lazy film. The characters all fall into the usual clichés with Thurber deciding that one of them should act like a pirate all the time which was never funny and grew more annoying as time passed.The performances from Stiller and Vaughan weren't brilliant if we're honest; the former overacts most of the time and crosses the line between being funny and being annoying on almost every occasion. Vaughan fares slightly better as his performance feels more natural, but I still felt that he underplayed his role slightly meaning that I couldn't engage with him as a character quite as much as I should have done.The final sequence of events seems to thrown in every single cliché in the book and all of these events lead to a fairly safe and predictable ending - barring one surprise that LaFleur has for Goodman which I'll admit was pretty funny (I liked that as I do like the idea of the little people getting the better of the big people).All in all then Dodgeball is a fairly forgettable film with a fairly standard story which aims for cheap laughs far too often. For me, an underdog story will always have some merit, but the truth is that Dodgeball is too basic and just simply isn't funny enough.
vintagegal3 Peter is an owner of a very average gym. But his rival gym is a super high-tech, fancy gym right across the corner.Peter must get 10,000 dollars to stop the evil owner of the other gym taking over his gym, and buying it. Peter, and his crew of people who go to his gym, see a dodge-ball tournament slot open for grabs. The prize: 10,000 dollars!Peter and his team barely make it through the first round, beating the Girl Scouts by disqualification because one of the Girl Scouts was using steroids. Ben Stiller is a great bad guy, and he proved it in this movie. It is very exciting to see Peter's team advance through the playoffs and eventually win the whole tournament.