Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story Movie Review

Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn have made five knockout original comedies between them: Swingers, There's Something About Mary, Zoolander, Meet the Parents, and Old School. Dodgeball is surprisingly better than each of them in certain ways. Here's how:

Dodgeball vs. Swingers: These are two movies made by relatively green directors (Rawson Thurber and Doug Liman, respectively), where the laughs are milked from a frumpy bachelor and his herd of friends. That said, comparing Swingers' Mike Peters (Jon Favreau) with Dodgeball's wrinkled single guy Peter LaFleur (Vaughn), the latter film triumphs because Peter's friends are twice as random and pathetic as Mike's, yet they come together to help out their pal.

Their reason for being is to defend Peter's gym, Average Joe's, from being bought out by White Goodman (Stiller), the owner of Globo Gym, which stands stories higher than Joe's and caters to a spendy clientele. So magical are the charms of Peter and his friends -- his muscley assistant (Chris Williams); a disciple of obscure sports (the indomitable Stephen Root); a shrimpy, wannabe male cheerleader (Justin Long); a gangly dim bulb (Joel Moore); and a pirate (Alan Tudyk) -- that they win over attorney Kate Veatch (Christine Taylor), who's dispatched to oversee the foreclosing of Joe's.

Thurber, who unashamedly admits to modeling Dodgeball after Stripes, Caddyshack, Hoosiers, and Bring It On, clearly has the advantage of working with seasoned comedians. Accordingly, his script matches Vaughn's and Stiller's respective strengths; all Vaughn is required to do is react to the situation at hand. His voice flat and shirts untucked, he makes a perfect straight man (and descendent of Bill Murray -- seriously), casually deflecting Stiller's ill-formed tirades. Furthermore, Stiller saves himself from burnout by taking a backseat to Vaughn and Taylor, who on-screen have a kind of chemistry that makes you forget who's married to whom. He also makes room for the rest of the cast, who benefit from Thurber's fine script and cash in on his arsenal of one-liners and physical challenges.

Dodgeball vs. There's Something About Mary: What is Mary's lasting impression? (Hint: it's the semen.) Well, Dodgeball's semen jape is cleverer. And, thanks to Vaughn's understated delivery, it's ultimately more sickening.

Dodgeball vs. Zoolander: Though the one-joke premise so rarely succeeds, Dodgeball strings together its scenarios as it motors towards the showdown between the Average Joe's and the Purple Cobras of Globo Gym. Disjointed and clunkily paced, Zoolander limped towards its conclusion, as if the entire production broke a heel way before mounting the runway.

Taking one of the best scenes from each film, the walk-off between Derek Zoolander and Hansel McDonald, while genius, runs a distance second to Average Joe's taking on Brownie Troop #417 to qualify for the Las Vegas International Dodgeball Open Championships. Just imagine Vince Vaughn creaming an 11-year-old girl with a red playground ball. In slow motion.

Dodgeball vs. Meet the Parents: This comes down to how you like your Stiller served; neurotic, ticking time-bomb Ben, or someone more akin to Ben Stiller Show Ben. An amalgamation of fitness gurus, White Goodman finds Stiller harkening back to the days of agent Michael Pheret and the No, No, No Guy; Greg Focker is pap for mass consumption. (It's good-tasting milk, but still ...)

Dodgeball vs. Old School: Responsibility-addled adults set free to revisit the wildness and violence of youth is guaranteed to get men into theaters. But Old School wasn't as funny as you expected it to be, was it? Maybe it even felt a little lazy -- perhaps desperate? Put bluntly, Dodgeball is convulsively hilarious for the duration of its 94 minutes. I mean, dude, a pirate. It has a pirate in the cast, for absolutely no real reason.

In short, the point is that Stiller and Vaughn together are funnier than the sum of their separately funny parts. And Dodgeball is like Meatballs for adults who worship Office Space, and who want to see Vaughn and his cohorts take balls in the testicles. Really, really hard.