DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story

DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Rawson Marshall Thurber
Produced by	Ben Stiller Stuart Cornfeld
Written by	Rawson Marshall Thurber
Starring	Vince Vaughn Ben Stiller Christine Taylor Rip Torn
Music by	Theodore Shapiro
Cinematography	Jerzy Zielinski
Edited by	Alan Baumgarten Peter Teschner
Production company	Red Hour Films
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release dates	June 18, 2004 (2004-06-18)
Running time	92 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$20 million
Box office	$167.7 million

DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story is a 2004 American sports comedy film produced by 20th Century Fox and Red Hour Productions, written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber and starring Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller. The film focuses on a rivalry between the owners of Average Joe's, a small gym, and Globo-Gym, a competing big-budget gym located across the street. Peter LaFleur (Vaughn), the owner of the smaller gym, has defaulted on his mortgage and enters a dodgeball tournament in an attempt to earn the money necessary to prevent his gym from being purchased by Globo-Gym to build a new parking lot for their gym members. Globo-Gym enters a team in the tournament in an effort to ensure that Average Joe's gym fails.

DodgeBall received generally positive reviews, including a 70% aggregate rating on Rotten Tomatoes,^[1] and grossed more than $167 million worldwide.

Plot

Peter LaFleur is the owner of Average Joe's, a small gym with only a few members. When he defaults on the gym's mortgage, it is purchased by his rival, the arrogant White Goodman, a fitness guru and owner of the Globo Gym across the street. Unless Peter can raise $50,000 in thirty days, White will foreclose on Average Joe's and demolish it to build a parking garage. Attorney Katherine "Kate" Veatch is working on the transaction for White. White unsuccessfully attempts to seduce her and she instead develops a close friendship with Peter.

Average Joe's employees Dwight and Owen and members Steve "the Pirate," Justin and Gordon try to raise the money needed to save the gym. Gordon suggests that they enter a dodgeball tournament in Las Vegas with a $50,000 prize. They form a team with Peter and watch a 1950s-era training video narrated by dodgeball legend Patches O'Houlihan and a 12-year old boy named Timmy (Cayden Boyd). They are soundly defeated by a Girl Scout troop in a local qualifying match but win by default when the Scouts are disqualified because of one member's steroid and beaver tranquilizer use.

White spies on Average Joe's using a hidden camera and forms his own dodgeball team to defeat them. Peter is approached by the aging, wheelchair-bound Patches, who volunteers to coach the team. Patches' training regimen includes throwing wrenches at the team, forcing them to dodge oncoming cars and constantly roasting them with insults. Kate demonstrates skill at the game but declines to join the team as it would be a conflict of interest. Upon finding a loophole in the contract with Kate, White arranges for her to be fired from her law firm so that dating him would not be a conflict of interest. This enrages Kate and motivates her to join the Average Joe's team.

At the tournament in Las Vegas, Average Joe's suffers early setbacks but manages to advance to the final round against Globo Gym. The night before the match, Patches is killed by a falling sign. Peter expresses his anxiety that the team will lose and scolds Steve for his embarrassing pirate persona, causing Steve to leave the team. White offers Peter $100,000 for the deed to Average Joe's, which Peter accepts. The day of the final round, Justin leaves to help his classmate Amber with a cheerleading competition, leaving the team without enough members to compete. Peter has a chance encounter with Lance Armstrong, who talks him into rejoining his team, but he arrives too late: Average Joe's forfeits the match. Gordon finds a loophole in the rules: a majority of the judges can overturn the forfeiture. Chuck Norris casts the tie-breaking vote allowing the team to play.

After an intense game, Peter and White face off in a sudden-death match to determine the winner. Inspired by a vision of Patches, Peter blindfolds himself and is able to dodge White's throw and strike him, winning the championship and the prize money. White declares the victory meaningless, since Peter had sold Average Joe's to him the previous night, but Peter reveals that he used White's $100,000 bribe to bet on Average Joe's to win; with the odds against them at 50 to 1, he wins $5 million. Because Globo Gym is a public company (which White was unaware of), he purchases a controlling interest in the company, which now also includes Average Joe's and fires White. Steve returns to the group after Peter apologizes to him. Peter is shocked when a girlfriend of Kate's kisses her passionately but Kate then reveals that she is bisexual and kisses Peter as well. Justin finds romance with Amber, while Owen begins dating Fran from the Globo Gym team. Peter opens youth dodgeball classes at a newly renovated Average Joe's, while White, as depicted in a vignette during the credits becomes massively obese from eating junk food.

Cast

Cameo appearances

• Lance Armstrong
• Chuck Norris
• David Hasselhoff

Reception

Dodgeball received a generally positive response from critics and audiences. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 70%, based on 161 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The site's consensus reads, "Proudly profane and splendidly silly, Dodgeball is a worthy spiritual successor to the goofball comedies of the 1980s."^[2] On Metacritic the film has a score of 55 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".^[3]

Slant Magazine dismissed the film as "a less-than-one-joke film",^[4] while TV Guide remarked that Ben Stiller "doesn't know when to stop".^[5] Other critics, such as The Boston Globe, praised Stiller's satirical take on male virility and praised the chemistry between Vince Vaughn and Christine Taylor.^[6] Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal initially declined to review the movie, believing it was not worthy of his time. However, after reviewing the DVD, he changed his view of the movie, writing, "Mea culpa, mea culpa. Rawson Marshall Thurber's debut feature, starring Ben Stiller opposite Vince Vaughn, is erratic, imbecilic if not completely idiotic, inconsequential in even the small scheme of things, and thoroughly entertaining".^[7] Roger Ebert gave the film a three stars out of four rating in his Chicago Sun-Times review and writes "in a miraculous gift to the audience, 20th Century-Fox does not reveal all of the best gags in its trailer."^[8]

Box office

In its first week, the film grossed over $29 million, and would go on to a domestic gross of $114,324,072,^[9] and a worldwide total of $167,722,310.^[10]

Awards

• 2004 ESPY Awards
  • Best Sports Movie – Nominated
• 2005 BMI Awards
  • Best Film Music, Theodore Shapiro – Won
• 2005 MTV Movie Awards
  • Best Comedic Performance, Ben Stiller – Nominated
  • Best On-Screen Team (Vince Vaughn, Christine Taylor, Justin Long, Alan Tudyk, Stephen Root, Joel Moore and Chris Williams) – Nominated
  • Best Villain, Ben Stiller – Won
• 25th Golden Raspberry Awards
  • Worst Actor, Ben Stiller (Also for Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Along Came Polly, Envy, and Starsky & Hutch [all 2004]) – Nominated

Copyright lawsuit

In 2005, two New York City screenwriters, David Price and Ashoka Thomas, filed suit in federal court against Fox and Thurber, claiming copyright infringement of an unproduced screenplay they had written, DodgeBall: The Movie, by Thurber and Fox. They alleged there were a number of similarities in the plots of the two screenplays, and that Thurber may have had access to their screenplay, which was finished a month before his and submitted to an agent whose assistant he was acquainted with.^[11] Lawyers for the defendants dismissed some of the allegations as coincidental. They said that both screenplays were the work of writers who used common formulaic elements. Judge Shira Scheindlin denied the defense motion for summary judgement and ordered a jury trial.^[12][13] The suit was later settled out of court.^[14][15]

Sequel

On April 22, 2013, it was announced that 20th Century Fox has started developing a sequel to the film, with Clay Tarver writing the script and Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn returning to star.^[16]

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story

• DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story at the Internet Movie Database
• DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story at AllMovie
• DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story at Box Office Mojo
• DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story at Rotten Tomatoes
• DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story at Metacritic