Product Details

• Format: NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Rating: Unrated
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (304 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00065HKE8
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #161,305 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
How's this for impressive trivia: Dodgeball faced off against The Terminal in opening-weekend competition, and 29-year-old writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber aced Steven Spielberg by a score of $30 to $18.7 in box-office millions. That's no mean feat for a newcomer, but Thurber's lowbrow script and rapid-fire direction--along with a sublime cast of screen comedians--proved to be just what moviegoers were ravenous for: a consistently hilarious, patently formulaic romp in which the underdog owner of Average Joe's Gym (Vince Vaughn) faces foreclosure unless he can raise $50,000 in 30 days. The solution: A dodgeball tournament offering $50K to the winners, in which Vaughn and his nerdy clientele team up against the preening, abhorrently narcissistic owner (Ben Stiller) of Globo Gym, who's threatening a buy-out. That's it for story; any 5-year-old could follow it with brainpower to spare. But Thurber, Vaughn, Stiller, and their well-cast costars (including Stiller's off-screen wife, Christine Taylor) keep the big laughs coming for 96 nonsensical minutes. With spot-on cameos by champion bicyclist Lance Armstrong, David Hasselhoff, Hank Azaria, Chuck Norris, and William Shatner, and a crudely amusing coda for those who watch past the credits, Dodgeball is no masterpiece, but you can bet Spielberg was unexpectedly humbled by its popular appeal. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description
You'll dodge, duck, dip, dive. . . and laugh out loud watching Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller settle their differences in a winner-take-all dodgeball competition. Under the painful tutelage of legendary ADAA champ, Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn), Peter LaFleur (Vaughn) and his Average Joes take on the Purple Cobras, led by egomaniacal fitness guru, White Goodman (Stiller). It's an over-the-top underdog tale filled with hilarious sight gags and balls-out fun!

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Boink!, July 3, 2004

By	Wheelchair Assassin (The Great Concavity) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

I'm always a sucker for some goofy, lowbrow humor, and I went to see "Dodgeball" expecting just that. Suffice to say, the movie more than delivered on its promise. Combining the sports satire of "BASEketball" with the slacker comedy of last year's sleeper hit "Old School," "Dodgeball" is a fast-paced, brilliantly cast howler of a movie for everyone who remembers the ordeal of junior-high gym class. The movie's message isn't exactly subtle, as it relentlessly needles our country's twin obsessions with sports and image in a contest that pits unassuming regular guys against musclebound jerks.

Representing the side of the good is Vince Vaughn's likable everyman Peter LaFleur and and his band of misfits from Average Joe's Gym, where it's okay just to be yourself. Facing them is Ben Stiller's furiously narcissistic White Goodman and the walking super-egos of Globo-Gym, where self-hatred and insecurity rule and the motto is "We're Better Than You and We Know It." Those who played dodgeball in school probably remember how much degradation and humiliation was often involved, and the movie has a ball with this idea, never more so than with a hilariously anachronistic instructional video featuring Hank Azaria as dodgeball hero Patches O'Houlihan.

With the $50,000 Peter needs to keep his gym alive hanging in the balance, the now wheelchair-bound patches makes a triumphant return to dodgeball as the team's coach. In a brilliant takeoff on movie training montages, Patches prepares Peter's ragtag team for competition by dispensing such wisdom as "aim low" and "if you can dodge traffic, you can dodge a ball." It all comes to a head in the American Dodgeball Association of America's championship in Las Vegas, with Peter's ragtag group facing White's imposing juggernaut as Gary Cole and Jason Bateman (two of our finest and most underappreciated actors) provide crackling commentary for the telecast on ESPN 8.

While it does contain a few flat spots and excessive moments, there's still a lot to recommend "Dodgeball" to the average viewer. Its easygoing goofball humor, led by Stiller's furious mugging as White, is intelligent without straining the mind too hard. Sports fans like myself will almost surely get a kick out of the movie's knowing winks at the excesses of America's sporting culture, such as the very existence of an eighth ESPN channel. And the movie's casting is superb, as Vaughn, Stiller, Cole, and Bateman are joined by the ever-hot Christine Taylor, Stephen Root of "Office Space" fame, Rip Torn (as the older version of Patches O'Houlihan), and Lance Armstrong, whose cameo is easily among the movie's high-water marks. All in all, "Dodgeball" is a welcome break in a summer-movie season too often marked by stupid special-effects blockbusters.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.", October 3, 2004

By	Yoshi "Boo Boo Johnson" (Yoshi's Island) - See all my reviews

This movie was awesome! The stars, Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller, are hilarious. The plot is a little... lame (Vince Vaughn's gym is going to be bought by Ben Stiller's, unless he can get enough money to keep the gym; one of the members of the crappy gym suggests they go into a dodgeball tournament.) but it makes up in its hilariousness. Just the characters are funny; there's one who thinks he's a pirate, another wants to impress a girl by going on the cheerleading team. In one part, they get the wrong box of team uniforms, and... well I won't tell you'll have to see. Basically this whole movie is funny, so see it!

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a comedy is supposed to be, September 5, 2004

By	cmurphy82 (Granby, CO) - See all my reviews

I'm a little annoyed with all of the negative reviews for this movie, considering it is the funniest movie I have seen for a while. People are forgetting what a comedy's purpose in life is; to make people laugh. I was sitting in a large movie theater, full of people, who of all things, were laughing.

Ben Stiller plays a character, that yes, we may have seen before, but that's because he does it well. It works. Vince Vaughn plays your average joe, with an army full of hilarious sidekicks, what more do you need? How about some of the best cameo appearances I've seen. People need to stop thinking so much when they go to movies like this....just sit back and enjoy it! It's not going to change the world, but it made quite the impression on me!