BEFORE: Patton Oswalt carries over from "I Love My Dad". I almost met Mr. Oswalt one time, he came to our booth at San Diego Comic-Con one time, but he was in disguise, and also I was on a break, so I didn't get to meet him in person. I'd seen him walking around that same convention center a couple years before that, he was with Brian Posehn. But I did talk to him via e-mail, he did a voice-over for a short animated film that I worked on, called "The Loneliest Stoplight", and for that I processed his paycheck through SAG, along with a donation to his pension fund. I like to follow all the rules and keep things legal.
THE PLOT: Down-and-out former professional ping-pong phenom Randy Daytona is sucked into a maelstrom when FBI Agent Ernie Rodriguez recruits him for a secret mission. Randy is determined to bounce back and win, and to smoke out his father's killer - arch-fiend Feng.
AFTER: It's not that I was really looking forward to watching this movie, I really just put it on my list because it was airing on cable, and it's just another movie that I've never watched. Sometimes I just need MORE material to be able to make my links. But since I try to color-code all the instances of actors being on my list two or more times, I noticed that this film shared a few actors with the Father's Day films on my list. And if a film can be used to connect Christmas movies, or horror movies or romances, well that's just the kind of thing I need to be aware of, in case I get stuck in February or October or December, or I need to link AWAY from holiday programming or documentaries or something - it does me no good to progam 30-plus docs if I don't have some kind of exit strategy, then the chain gets broken.
So what I had in mind was connecting a potential Father's Day film with Christopher Walken, called "One More TIme", it's been on my list for a couple years, but every June something more important comes up, or I can't seem to swing the chain in that film's direction to link to it. But now it's going to serve a different purpose, it's still going to be linking two Father's Day films, just not THAT one - and it looks like I'll have to wait another year at least to watch "One More Time". Those are the breaks.
"Balls of Fury" isn't totally off-topic, the main character's father died after betting on him at the Olympics, and when he lost, Korean gangsters killed Randy's father. Hey, that almost counts as a topic for Father's Day, even if that's not the main plotline of the movie, it says something about the main character that he lost his father at a young age, and he has to go back to the sport that caused his father's death in order to avenge that tragedy. But this isn't a serious film, it's a very silly comedy - yet even there we find something on topic for the patriarchal themes this week and next. (Just 11 days left until the holiday, have you made plans to take your father to brunch yet?)
I just didn't find the film to be very funny, while it's plenty ridiculous, there just aren't a lot of jokes. I kind of expect more from the writing team behind "Reno 911!", as well the "Night at the Museum" films. But this film about underground ping pong tournaments run by an Asian crime-lord somehow seems less plausible than a film about museum exhibits coming to life at night, if that's at all possible. And casting a white actor as that Asian crime-lord? I thought that was a no-no, I mean if you can get Christopher Walken then sure, you should get Christopher Walken, but you also have to be racially sensitive, look at how people freaked out when Tilda Swinton played an old Asian man in "Avengers: Endgame". That sort of thing will get you cancelled these days.
Yeah, so this is not really my thing, I freely admit that I'm using this film as mortar tonight to keep two bricks from the Father's Day chain together. Mea culpa. If this had been funnier then I really wouldn't have minded doing that at all, but that's not where we find ourselves tonight, is it?
Also starring Dan Fogler (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Christopher Walken (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), George Lopez (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Maggie Q (last seen in "The Protégé"), James Hong (last heard in "Wendell & Wild"), Terry Crews (last seen in "Blended"), Robert Patrick (last seen in "Fire in the Sky"), Diedrich Bader (last seen in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods"), Aisha Tyler (last seen in "Friendsgiving"), Thomas Lennon (last seen in "A Guy Thing"), David Koechner (ditto), Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (last seen in "Memoirs of a Geisha"), Brett DelBuono (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Jason Scott Lee (last seen in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny"), Toby Huss (last seen in "Blonde"), Heather DeLoach (last seen in "Anywhere But Here"), Kerri Kenney (last seen in "All About Steve"), Floyd Van Buskirk, Jenny Robertson (last seen in "Role Models"), Jim Lampley (last seen in "Creed II"), La Na Shi, Mather Zickel (last seen in "Babylon"), Jim Rash (last seen in "Bros"), David Proval (last seen in "Smokin' Aces"), Philipp Lawrence Durand (last seen in "World War Z"), Masi Oka (last seen in "Bullet Train"), Cathy Shim (also last seen in "Memoirs of a Geisha"), Greg Joung Pak, Eugene Choy, Matt Sigloch (last seen in "Truth"), Mark Hyland, Justin Lopez, Irina Voronina, Darryl Chan, Aaron Takahashi (last seen in "The Wedding RInger"), Harry Yi
with archive footage of Muhammad Ali (last seen in "McEnroe"), Jesse Owens, Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Framing John DeLorean"), Nancy Reagan (last seen in "Beauty").
RATING: 4 out of 10 poison-tipped blowdarts
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