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This masterpiece of modern cinema depends upon a single truism: A guy getting hit in the nuts a hundred times in a row is funny a hundred times.
The most satisfying comedy of the past year -- at least among the ones starring Stiller.
... a hilariously worthy successor to the great goofball comedies of the late Seventies and early Eighties, movies like Caddyshack and Meatballs.
Just watching grown-ups get bombarded by rubber balls, you know? Makes me feel 12 again.
The movie doesn't just pussyfoot around conventionality -- it hits it square in the stomach and then leaps around shamelessly in a smug victory dance.
Think Bad News Bears crossed with Happy Gilmore.
In the end it just felt like we were being told one long joke but were never given the punchline.
The jokes fly as wildly as the titular sports gear, landing solidly more often than you'd expect thanks to a fast-paced script and a cast of good-natured misfits led by Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller.
Stiller is in fine form and just watching his exaggerated, paranoid egocentric White is amusing in itself.
Trash comedies such as this are usually more painful than funny, but writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber pulls enough hilarious gags and cameos out of his gym bag to qualify his first feature as the summerâ(TM)s first guilty pleasure.
Stiller gives one of his broadest and best performances to date, and the jokes ping around the screen as fast as the balls on the court.
The film wants only to pit its common-man heroes against a bunch of colorful, laughable adversaries, and achieves this goal admirably.
White Goodman is one of Stiller's craziest creations, a hilariously dim-witted and mean-spirited jock that doesn't realize how pathetic he really is.
The biggest laughs come from a cameo, which is never a good sign.
Can somebody please stop Ben Stiller?
I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard at seeing a young man get beaned in the head with a wrench.
It never remotely feels set in the real world, and yet neither does it achieve a level of heightened or amusing alternate reality that sustains its out-there concept.
The humor in Dodgeball may be a bit dodgy, especially in its Unrated form, but at least it's there. (Unrated Edition)
Buy the unrated version for extra profanity, a pretty funny "joke" commentary, some bland cheerleader clips, and a handful of new deleted scenes.
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