DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY (2004) **1/2 I know it's low-brow and in bad taste, but I like it. It's a story ostensibly about a dodgeball tournament "starring" the inherently offensive Ben Stiller. Is it really a wild psychically subterranean metaphor for the grandeur of the commonality that we share yet strive to bury (albeit in a non-Marxist format)? Um, I can't vouch for what's going on in anyone's subterranea, but I hope not. There's nothing grand about it anyways, it's crap! It shouts out that it is, and it doesn't lie. It's also clever and relentlessly semi-clever for self-identifying garbage, and that's not necessarily easy to do. You have to keep doing things (cameos abound, most effectively by David Hasselhoff, now you get the idea if you hadn't already)..not that you can actually distract from the reality that it's about dodgeball, but more so.not that the edge is taken off either, more that the ultra-rounded squareness appears to have an edge. Finally a premise that.not that Stiller can live up to so much, more one that is perfectly comfortable wallowing with him. And wallow he does! When he's this awful and demanding that you acknowledge it, you almost have to like or respect the guy. I'm not sure which, they both seem so alien. They're all pretty funny actually, with Jason Bateman "winning." Every syllable that slides out of his mouth belongs in the slacker hall of fame, if someone gets around to building one for 'em. I hope they do, because the other they need a place to sit. This may ultimately stand as Stiller's greatest achievement, but I hope that Mrs. Stiller (Christine Taylor) will some day be able to look back on it with something akin to the sort of ambivalence that Susan Sarandon reserves for Rocky Horror.
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