CINEMA: Balls Of Fury

You can just imagine the development meeting for this film. “I know,” said one writer, “Lets take a Karate Kid-style scenario, have a to-the-death tournament setting, and nick some ideas from Shaolin Soccer, only lets make it about Table Tennis because that’s surely good for a laugh?”

“Oh,” cried the other “and let’s get that hot chick from Die Hard 4 so we can have some kung fu thrown in for good measure”.

And so Balls of Fury was born. The piss-weak plotline centres on Randy Daytona (Dan Fogler), a former child table tennis star who blows his chance of glory, leading to the death of his father, and so ends up as a lounge act in Reno, performing acrobatic tricks with ping pong balls. He is offered the chance to avenge his father and bring down the gang that killed him by taking part in a secret tournament held by the nefarious Feng (Christopher Walken, who should be hanging his head in shame or, at the very least, firing his agent).

So he is taken under the wing of Master Wong (played by everybody’s favourite token China-man James Hong – Chow Yun Fat obviously had better things to do) and his niece Maggie, where comedy ensues. Well, maybe it does in the script perhaps, but the film itself falls completely flat when it comes to bringing the funny.

Every time the potential for a hilarious gag creeps up, be it visual joke or a clever line, Balls of Fury veers off in a different direction offering puns and slapstick that fails to even make your mouth twitch. Crude in-your-face gags are favoured above anything actually clever and cliché after cliché is spewed out as fast as the balls are flying.

Fogler lacks the charisma that Ralph Macchio had that made Karate Kid such a laugh, and all the subtlety that made Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle so funny, has been thwacked aside for gags where, the only way to make them any more obvious that you are supposed to be enjoying a comedy moment, would be to stop and hold up signs saying “please laugh now”.

It’s like the makers of this have tried to suck all of the joy from the films that have influenced this foul shot of a film and instead used all the rubbish bits. Plus any film that can draw comparison to Mortal Kombat is not onto a good thing.

Is there anything to redeem it? The tricks and physicality of the actual table tennis does look brilliant, but that really is it. No Fury – Just balls.
Louise Steggals