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Balls of Fury is a film from a slate of obscure-sports sports movie parodies (Dodgeball, Blades of Glory), that were popular in the mid-'00s.
19 Years after a humiliating failure at the '88 Olympic Games, ping-pong prodigy Randy Daytona is eking out a living as a trick-ping-pong-artist; on the day he gets fired, he is invited by George Lopez of the FBI to be the Bruce Lee equivalent in a ping-pong themed Enter the Dragon parody: reclusive criminal overlord hosting exclusive tournament in private fortress.
Tropes used in Balls of Fury include:
- Action Girl: Maggie.
- Affably Evil: The (formerly East) German rival of Randy.
- Ass Shove: "We're gonna have to sneak this in the old fashioned way..."
- Chekhov's Skill: Bouncing ping-pong balls off of people.
- Christopher Walken: Pretty much the only reason to watch this movie. Either that or you lost a bet.
- The Dragon: Christopher Walken's seems to be something like half-Dragon Lady, half-Mayday from A View to a Kill, who was coincidentally also The Dragon to a Christopher Walken villain.
- Fake Nationality: Not only is Maggie Q only half-Asian, but the Asian half is Vietnamese.
- Groin Attack: Happens a few times, including an incident with chopsticks.
- I'm Going to Disney World: Randy, in a daze, blurts this out when he is humiliated at the Olympics. Years later, when greeting Feng's audience, a foreign national breaks the silence with, "how was Disney World?" making this statement an Old Shame.
- Insult Backfire: "The joke's on you, its ladies speed stick!"
- Involuntary Battle to the Death
- Little Miss Badass: The Dragon.
- Me Love You Long Time
- Mighty Whitey: Though Randy is referred to by his teacher as "gwailo" (literally "ghost man" but taken to mean "foreign devil"), he is acknowledged as the only player able to beat Feng's contestants (and Feng himself).
- Murderous Thighs: See "leg-grip-neck-crunchy thing" below.
- No OSHA Compliance: Lampshaded, at the end.
- Oh Crap: Said by the blow dart chick after she gets stuck with one of her own blow darts.
- Pec Flex: Daytona's first opponent in the tournament (Mr. Terry Crews) does this excessively.
- Punch-Punch-Punch Uh-Oh: Subverted. The Action Girl Token Romance punches a bad guy, kicks him, does a Sophitia-esque leg-grip-neck-crunchy thing to him, and he doesn't even bat an eye. Then he falls over.
- Rule of Funny: The only reason the "grave site under a water slide" scene works. Zoning laws obviously wouldn't allow for such a thing to be possible.
- Serious Business: "You killed him..." "Well, duh. What part of 'sudden death' didn't you understand?"
- Ping-Pong in general is taken VERY seriously in this movie.
- Sophisticated As Hell:
"I'm trying to sacrifice my life in the name of our love, quit being such a dick!" |
- There Was a Door: Inverted. You could try to break through the armored door, but that's stupid when there's a window right next to it.
- Training from Hell: Naturally.
- When You Snatch the Pebble: Subverted: we never find out what lesson the cricket in James Hong's hand was meant to help impart, but it apparently wasn't "grab it as quick as you can."
- Yellow Peril