| | | Grab Life by the Ball.
Features: DVD, Widescreen, Aspect Ratio 1.78:1, Dolby Digital (2.0), Dolby Digital Surround, Trailers, English, Spanish, French Subtitled
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! What is UMDTM?
UMD, Universal Media Disc, is a brand-new and groundbreaking optical storage medium, designed for the high speed and efficient delivery of digital entertainment content that can store up to 1.8 GB of digital data on a 60mm disc -- or an entire feature film on a single UMD video. All UMD DVDs are produced in Widescreen and encoded using advanced AVC compression. UMD for PSP will play on the new PlayStation Portable handheld entertainment system.
Specifications
Diameter: 60 mmMaximum Capacity: 1.8GB (Single-sided, dual layer)Laser wavelength: 660nm (Red laser)
"Pointed and satiric. Best of all, one must hasten to admit, it's pretty funny." Chris Kaltenbach, Baltimore Sun
"...a treasure of small gems." Desson Howe, The Washington Post
"...a slaphappy send-up of the whole sniffly underdog sports-movie genre..." Entertainment Weekly
"Unpretentious, unsophisticated and all the better for it." Jim Dyer, Empire
"Hilariously fake and rude." Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
Editor's Note
In DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY, Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn team up once again (following STARSKY & HUTCH) for another comic romp. While hilariously satirizing modern-day gym culture, the film also celebrates a sport that has previously been relegated to the elementary school playground. Peter La Fleur (Vaughn) owns the decrepit Average Joe's gym, which has been losing its clients ever since the glitzy Globo Gym opened up across the street. White Goodman (Stiller), Globo Gym's main spokesman, is a preposterously vain egomaniac on the cusp of taking over La Fleur's failing business. La Fleur learns from a beautiful attorney (Christine Taylor) that if he doesn't come up with $50,000 in 30 days, his career running a gym will be over. Potential salvation arrives in the form of a Las Vegas dodgeball tournament, but conquering a sport one hasn't played in several decades isn't such an easy feat. Fortunately for Peter, he finds a coach for his team: the hardheaded, ex-superstar Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn). As Peter and his ragtag team make their way to the championship in Las Vegas, they must contend with White, who has assembled a team of his very own. Rawson Marshall Thurber's debut feature is a highly assured work, which features hilarious cameos from Chuck Norris, Lance Armstrong, David Hasselhoff, and William Shatner.
| Features | Subtitles: English, Spanish, French | | Trailers | | Widescreen Presentation | | Audio: English, French Dolby Digital 2.0, Dolby Digital Surround | | DVD Picture Quality | | Full Length Movie |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Foxvideo |
| Release Date: 4/4/2006 |
| Running Time: 92 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2004 | | Catalog ID: 2229731 | | UPC: 00024543197317 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English, French Dubbed, Spanish Dubbed | | Available Subtitles: English, French, Spanish | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
MTV Award (2005) |  | Ben Stiller, Winner, Best Villain | | | Ben Stiller, Nominee, Best Comedic Performance | | | Vince Vaughn, et. al., Nominee, Best On-Screen Team | |
ESPY (2004) | | | Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Nominee, Best Sports Movie |
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| | Professional Reviews | New York Times
"Nobody eviscerates the scary depths of male narcissism with such ferocity, and it is a huge relief to find Mr. Stiller flexing his oiled, low-comedy triceps with such vengeful glee....Consistently funny..." 06/18/2004 p.E12Entertainment Weekly
"[A] slaphappy send-up of the whole sniffly underdog sports-movie genre, written and directed with a changeup pitch of whizzy aggression and bouncy merriness..." 07/09/2004 p.65 Uncut
"Superb performances from the deadpan Vaughn and the fearless Stiller in one of the funniest films of the year." 09/01/2004 p.132 Sight and Sound
"Vaughn recalls the seemingly effortless shtick Bill Murray trades on, and the unruffled sense of amiability he maintains, even during the daftest bits of knockabout, is the movie's chief pleasure." 10/01/2004 p.52-4 Premiere
"[I]t's a worthy addition to the genre....Thurber and company deliver the goods..." 12/01/2004 p.164 Chicago Sun-Times
"[With] Rip Torn getting enormous laughs with his training methods as their coach..." 12/03/2004 p.11 ReelViews 8 of 10
Of course, Dodgeball isn't a true underdog anything, but that's all part of the joke. A blistering satire of feel-good sports movies, this film makes its mark via the most direct route: it lampoons by adopting the tried-and-true "straight" formula and tweaking it a little. The approach works because many sports dramas are borderline unintentional parodies with less tension than a flaccid cable; all the filmmakers of Dodgeball had to do was to follow the plot-by-numbers approach, incorporate some obviously comedic material, and toss in a huge dose of over-the-top earnestness. The resulting product offers about 90 minutes of laughter (although the movie runs out of steam during its final third)...Few satires are capable of sustaining their comedic momentum for the length of a full feature film, and Dodgeball is no exception. The film starts out slowly, hits its stride fifteen minutes in, then starts flagging around the two-thirds point. By the time Dodgeball reaches its obligatory conclusion, all of the potential for humor has been burned up. Of course, comedy is subjective, and there are those who will be less-than-enamored with Dodgeball's sophomoric and occasionally vulgar brand of humor. For me, however, it was a pleasant diversion in the midst of a movie season that has been, to this point, a disappointment. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
"Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story" is a title that rewards close study. It does not say it is a true story. It says it is about a true underdog. That is true. This is a movie about a spectacularly incompetent health club owner (Vince Vaughn) who tries to save his club from foreclosure by entering a team in the $50,000 world series of dodgeball in Las Vegas. Proof that the team is an underdog: One of the team members believes he is a pirate, and another team member hasn't noticed that...Vaughn's club, Average Joe's Gym, is run-down and shabby but has a loyal if nutty clientele. Across the street is a multi-million-dollar muscle emporium known as Globo Gym is (there is no "l" in the title, perhaps because it fell off). Globo is owned by Ben Stiller, overacting to the point of apoplexy as White Goodman; his manic performance is consistently funny, especially when he protects against Small Man Complex by surrounding himself with enormous body-builders and building an inflatable crotch into his training pants...I dare not say much more without giving away jokes; in a miraculous gift to the audience, 20th Century-Fox does not reveal all of the best gags in its trailer. Therefore let me just gently say that late in the movie a famous man approaches Peter La Fleur at the airport and gets laughs almost as big as the Patches O'Houlihan training technique. - Roger Ebert
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