Review - Balls of Fury (2007)

by Mr. Blunderson

written by Thomas Lennon & Robert Ben Garant
directed by Robert Ben Garant

God help me, I had a such a blast watching this movie. It's not great--hell it's probably not even that good but I liked it anyway. I can picture Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant sitting around thinking of all the funny shit they wanted Chirstopher Walken to say so they could spend hours giggling while watching the dailies. Some of the lines work better than others, but at the end of the day it's still Christopher Walken, so what am I complaining about?

It was also funny to see a few stoic faces from classic kung fu cinema doing things that are just plain silly. Balls of Fury is unapologetically cut from the mold of dozens of kung fu films, inserting ping pong in place of karate chops and drop kicks. This film is rough, unpolished and crude, but that's all it was ever meant to be. A lot of the jokes are predictable and most of the best lines are spoken by genre regular James Hong ("it is better to die like a tiger than to live like a pussy") and the Def Leppard shtick seemed like it came from Joe Dirt leftovers, and there was never any question where this film was going and how it would end... but I still had a good time dammit. Please don't hold it against me.

It will never be a classic and there are better ways I could have spent the hour and half, but I'm still giving Balls of Fury a "your loss if you hate it" on the Mr. Blunderson scale.