I finally caught Dodgeball (haha, a pun! So funny!) two nights ago with my girlfriend. Not exactly what I would call a good date movie (the last movie we saw together was the lucid Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind), but what do you expect from the post-Zoolander Ben Stiller?
I love a good loser movie, but in order for it to be effective, your lead loser has to be really, really good. Vince Vaughn is, unfortunately, not. My whole problem with this movie, in fact, is how Vince Vaughn’s character was fleshed out.
My favorite comedic losers of all-time include Kramer from Seinfeld, Jason Schwartzmann in Rushmore and Ben Stiller himself in Zoolander. The key to those characters are that they are blissfully unaware that they’re losers. In fact, they think they’re one step ahead of everyone else, and they can’t understand why people don’t revere them. This is why those characters are such classics.
Vaughn’s character, on the other hand, seems to know he’s a loser, yet does not actually do anything remotely loser-like throughout the movie. He’s not clumsy, or disgusting, or crazy, or awkward with the females. He’s a loser, simply because he says he is and we’re expected to just take his word for it. It escapes me why they would choose to tell a story from the point of view of the most boring character in the whole movie.
The reason why I find this so wrong is that the whole story hinges on the fact that Vince Vaughn is a loser that eventually wins at the end. But since he doesn’t feel like a loser, outsmarting Ben Stiller’s character after the tournament seems so easy. There’s nothing thrilling about seeing a smarter person beat a stupider one. In other words, there’s no growth, which is what makes loser films fun to watch (i.e., seeing your endearing loser finally make something of himself).
The final duel would have been so much better if it had been given to the high school kid, making him the big hero of the event. (I would have cut out the cheerleading tournament completely; it’s largely irrelevant anyway.) He’s the only other character that is properly fleshed out, and he’s likely the only one that the audience can really relate to. When you consider how many of the key characters are just there for flavor, it gives you an idea of how lacking in development this script really was.
I wouldn’t go out of my way to see this movie again, even on video. I had to see it though, because I believe that eventually Ben Stiller will come out with another movie of Zoolander’s quality, and I’ll be immensely happy to see it.
Just not this time, though.