by Thomas Ferguson

The guys who brought you Reno 911: Miami and Night at the Museum are back at it with the new comedy Balls of Fury. If the title alone isn’t enough to peak your interest, an over-the-top performance by Christopher Walken should. I’ll get back to him later.

Tony Award winning actor/comedian Dan Fogler plays Randy Daytona, a former Olympic ping pong prodigy who peaks at and unfortunately burns out at the tender age of twelve. After a crushing defeat and the brutal murder of his father, who coincidentally bet against him, Randy gives up the sport all together.

He spends his adult life doing ping pong tricks in a Reno, Nevada casino. Not the grand casinos you’d find in Las Vegas; no, the kind where rude patrons noisily suck soup and hack God knows what into their hankies. Think dinner theatre at Shady Pines. If you got that eighties sitcom reference, you get a gold star! For those who didn’t, think about four seniors sharing a house in Miami.

One night, there is a special guest in the audience that will change his life forever. Federal agent Ernie Rodriguez (George Lopez) needs a huge favor of Randy. He must go back into training to become one of the best ping pong players in the world again. Although not happy with his current work situation, Randy knows he has been off the scene way too long. It would take a miracle to get him back into the shape he once was.

Agent Rodriguez explains to Randy that a secret ping pong tournament takes place every year and only the best in the world get an invitation. The person responsible for this tournament is a former ping pong prodigy himself who just happens to be Feng (Christopher Walken), a cold-blooded killer on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. He also happens to be the man responsible for Randy’s father’s brutal murder. With revenge on his mind and a desire to reclaim the glory of the past in his heart, Randy goes back into training.

They start training at the local level, a regional tournament at a school’s annual pancake breakfast. Talk about tough competition. Of course, he loses. Things are much worse than Agent Rodriguez could have ever imagined. He must pull out the big guns if Randy is to be ready in the short two weeks before the tournament.

A Chinese ping pong master named Wong (James Hong) agrees to whip Randy in shape, but his methods are a bit radical. Randy is basically tortured, but he quickly learns discipline and control. Of course he loses this control when Master Wong’s young, beautiful niece Maggie (Maggie Q) starts to help. Randy begins to fall for her, but Wong is not having it. An awkward romance and a series of musical montages later, Randy is ready for competition and gets the invitation.

The world’s best have gathered to play each other in a game of sudden death…literally! The loser of the match is killed on the spot. Randy was not aware of this game rule and tries desperately to escape. He must decide whether to stay and fulfill his promise to bring down Feng or run away with his ping pong balls intact.

As the summer blockbuster season finally winds down, studios find themselves in a rush to push out their mediocre films to make room for the fall/holiday movies that are more award-friendly. Balls of Fury is as mediocre as mediocre can get. There were some funny sequences, but nothing you’d remember longer than the time it takes you to drive home.

The only thing that stuck out to me was a few of the performances. Dan Fogle was okay. George Lopez was fine. Maggie Q kicked serious butt, and writer Thomas Lennon was vaguely entertaining in the supporting role of Randy’s nemesis. It was James Hong and Christopher Walken that truly stole the show…what little there was to steal.

Hong is a character actor that has been around for quite some time, but he was finally given a role that could make him more of a name. His character had some of the best one-liners and since his character was blind, offered the opportunity for a ton of physical gags.

This brings us finally to Christopher Walken. This man is a genius when it comes to playing a bad guy. This time around he played it with such humor and quirkiness that I almost forgot about the movie’s uneven script.