BALLS OF FURY
RYAN: I have to admit, at first my balls were furious that we had to see this movie; but we did it for you, dear readers. It’s “Balls of Fury.”
CAROLINE: We saw it in the theater so you don’t have to. Having said that, it’s definitely not as bad as we thought it would be. It’s actually somewhat amusing.
RYAN: It’s way less unfortunate than I thought it would be. We had zero interest in seeing this film and in fact had our hearts set against it, so maybe we thought it was pretty good because our expectations were so low.
CAROLINE: I was pleased to see how good the main guy, Dan Fogler, is. He got a little bit famous after winning the Tony for “25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” and he’s taken his Broadway talents and applied them to a dumb movie. He’s very entertaining and funny. He doesn’t try too hard and he doesn’t get overly slapstick-y, which is nice. His character is also obsessed with Def Leppard so they play a lot of songs from “Pyromania” in the movie, which is nice for a former Def Leppard obsesser like myself.
RYAN: I’m a fan of his now. I didn’t get to see him in “Spelling Bee,” but I found him refreshing in this movie. Had the role gone to Jack Black, which it easily could have, it would have been sad because it would have been the same predictable Jack Black stuff that we’ve all seen before. Dan didn’t try to be Jack Black; he was doing his own stuff and it was very funny.
CAROLINE: Still, this is a pretty dumb movie that happens to have some funny moments. It wasn’t as dumb as we feared, but it’s still a rental at best.
RYAN: It was definitely silly. Nothing that happens would ever really happen and people don’t react to things the way normal people would react. Christopher Walken was fun, but this role was kind of a waste of time for him. His wardrobe was ridonkulous.
CAROLINE: I will never fully understand why his agent put him in this movie. Perhaps he knows the director and owed him a favor.
RYAN: It was fun to see Maggie Q in a cute, fun, ingénue role where she still got to use her martial arts techniques.
CAROLINE: We also dug her in “Live Free or Die Hard” earlier this summer. She’s super cute. And even George Lopez wasn’t totally unfortunate.
RYAN: He really annoyed me for some reason, I don’t know why.
CAROLINE: I think it’s his really bad skin.
RYAN: Maybe it’s just because he’s a little ugly.
CAROLINE: Bottom line?
RYAN: It’s not an awful film. It’s decently made, and it reminded me of the Austin Powers kind of humor. I’m a new fan of Dan Fogler. But seriously, if you’re dying to see a comedy, do yourself a favor and see “Superbad.” It’s brilliant.
CAROLINE: “Balls of Fury” has “rental” written all over it. You might be happy to catch in on cable one day when you’re hung over on the couch.
RYAN: Yeah, don’t even pay for the DVD rental, just wait for it to come to cable.
CAROLINE: It’ll make you chortle, but don’t go to this looking for the comedy of the summer ‘cuz you ain’t gonna find it.