This summer has already given us a movie peppered with the music of Europe (Hot Rod), so why not Def Leppard? One of the top bands of the 1980s finds their music sprinkled throughout Balls of Fury. I admit to being a continuing Lep fan from back in the day, and I found myself singing along to the tunes in the movie. Anyway, the movie is fun, in a very dumb way. It is not nearly as inspired as it seems to think it is, but the decidedly low-brow comedy did win me over. The movie turns out to be a pretty fun subversion of the Enter the Dragon story line. That is, if Bruce Lee was a ping-pong* champion rather than a martial artist.
At the 1988 Olympics Randy Daytona (Dan Fogler) was prepared to be crowned the next king of ping-pong™, but the pressure got to him, he lost the match to Karl Wolfschtagg (Thomas Lennon), his father was killed, and he became an overnight joke. Fast-forward to the present day and Daytona is working dinner theater off the Vegas strip. Daytona is found by FBI agent Ernie Rodriguez (George Lopez) during a particularly lackluster performance. The government has designs on using his skills to gain access to a secret underground ping-pong™ tournament. The in for Daytona is that the man behind the tournament is named Feng (Christopher Walken), and happens to be the man responsible for the death of his father.
After a little convincing on Rodriguez's part, Daytona is brought on board. The first step is to get him back on the ping-pong™ circuit to win some tournaments and get Feng's attention. That doesn't go too well, so they enlist the aid of Master Wong (James Hong), a blind ping-pong™ instructor who teaches above his take-out restaurant. Here, Wong, along with his lovely niece Maggie (Maggie Q), set about imparting the skills that Daytona will need to get into, and win, the deadly tournament. Before long, our hero is on his way to the remote fortress location where the tournament is held. Here finds out firsthand just how deadly his fight will be.
Article comments
1 - REMF
It was a lot of fun. Not great, not necessarily good, but fun. And it was neat to see Jason Scott Lee, whom I thought was GREAT in "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story."
2 - MICHAEL
This movie was a complete joke. and not in a good way!! RUBBISH from the beginning to the end.