Roxio CinemaNow - Balls of Fury

Roger Ebert appears to be getting back into full swing. reviewing not only "important" movies as he has done in the recent past during his year-long recovery from surgery, but also trivial ones as well. Indeed, his latest review, for Balls of Fury, which opens today (Wednesday) is as much a paean to the triviality of ping-pong, which the movie is about, as it is a review of the movie itself. Since playing it in summer camp as a youth, "I have never lost all affection for the sport," he writes, "and am careful to play it at least once every decade." In his review, Ebert also ruminates on performers he has seen in the past using paddles that have balls attached to them with rubber bands; Christopher Walken's appearance in the movie as an Asian; the genius of combining ping-pong and kung fu in a single package; and the special effects used to create the lightning-fast ping-pong contest in the movie. He has little to say about the merits of the film itself, except to resurrect a line he used in his review of Rush Hour 3: "If you're watching [it], you obviously didn't have anything better to do, anyway." But A.O. Scott in the New York Times concludes his review this way: "The movie seems to exist mainly so that some critic might say: If you see just one table tennis martial arts parody this year, make it Balls of Fury. I'm afraid I can't go that far." But Kevin Crust in the Los Angeles Times does not regard the film in similar good humor, remarking dyspeptically that it's "a lifeless ping-pong comedy that ricochets from one flat gag to the next." On the other hand, Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News clearly esteems the film for all that it is worth (which may not be much). She writes: "If it's not quite the best Will Ferrell movie he never made, Balls of Fury is, at the very least, a lot funnier than it has a right to be. It stars a complete unknown, features cheerfully cheesy effects, and relies on so many hit-to-the-groin jokes, the title should probably have the word 'steel' in it."