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Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Somebody please explain to me why people seem to think that Ben Stiller is funny. I still can't figure it out. I've seen There's Something About Mary, Mystery Men, Meet the Parents, and now Dodgeball. And while there were funny parts in some of those movies, I don't recall ever really being that impressed with Ben Stiller.
Certainly in this movie — which was a rather limp attempt at parodying the feel good sports movie — he's in fine unfunny form, spending most of his time trying to be overbearing and funny, and mostly just being annoying. As for the rest of the cast, they just played a bunch of rejects in ways that were pretty much as unfunny as Ben Stiller, just not as annoying. I might have laughed out loud once, but I can't really recall.
It seems to me that a lot of comedies these days rely on randomness to be inherently humorous. In this movie we get Alan Tudyk as Steve the Pirate. Why does he think he's a pirate? Who knows, but it's clear that somebody thought that having a random character who thought he was a pirate was just funny. But I didn't really find it funny. I have the same problem with a lot of recent "Adult Swim" animation as well. Honestly, I tried watching Sealab 2021, but it wasn't funny or enjoyable, just random.
The other element I see repeated over and over in recent "comedies" are the scenes that are designed to make you cringe over absurdly embarrassing situations. As far as I can tell, this got really popular in Seinfeld after the first couple of seasons, and everyone has been racing to copy it. Personally I can't stand it. If I want to cringe while people do dumb stuff, I'll watch a horror movie. :-)
But enough ranting. Ben Stiller gets one more chance shortly when we check out Starsky & Hutch. As for Dodgeball, color me sorely disappointed after the hype. 1.5/4 stars.