Thanks to Saturday Night Live, Christopher Walken has reinvented himself as a comedic actor. His “More Cowbell” sketch is legendary, and the “Best of Christopher Walken” DVD has been a top seller. Walken appeared in last year’s Adam Sandler remote control comedy, “Click,” and he also was married to John Travolta in the big screen version of “Hairspray” earlier this year. This week, Walken is back in what could be his strangest role to date in “Balls of Fury.”
The film centers on Randy Daytona (played by Tony Award winner Dan Fogler), a child ping-pong prodigy that was the star of the 1988 Olympic Games, (not in real life, just in the movie). Daytona’s father places a wager on his son’s championship match, which ends up costing Randy the game, and his father his life. Randy is disgraced and spends the next 19 years doing ping-pong tricks in Reno.
Flash forward to the present, and the FBI is trying to bust a Chinese crime lord named Feng, (played by Christopher Walken). Feng also happens to be the one behind Randy’s father’s death and is a HUGE ping-pong fan. Feng is holding an invitation only ping-pong tournament and the feds recruit Randy to go in as their mole to bust Feng and get his revenge for the death of his father.
An action-craving FBI agent, (played by George Lopez), a blind ping-pong teacher and his niece, (James Hong and Maggie Q.), round out our group of heroes in this slap-stick comedy.
“Balls of Fury” is “Enter the Dragon” meets “Hot Shots,” but it doesn’t fare nearly as well as either of those two films. The humor is primarily physical, and gets old pretty fast. Fogler is decent as the washed up ping-pong player, and George Lopez is as funny as he can be in his limited role. The big disappointment for me, though, was Walken. It seemed like he never really got a handle on his character of Feng. He’s playing a Chinese crime lord, but he’s dressed like Gary Oldman in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” And, he’s not Chinese! Maybe that’s part of the gag, but it’s not very funny. He also delivers his lines in a variety of ways – ranging from raspy and guttural to Liberace-like. The bottom line is that I never bought him as the bad guy.
The climactic scene is over-the-top and ridiculous, with Feng and Daytona playing a life-or-death game of ping-pong…with no table. It makes no sense at all.
So, should you “go see it,” “wait for the DVD,” or “skip it?”
I’m going with “wait for the DVD,” or maybe even HBO.