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Movie Review: "Balls of Fury"
by Skip Tucker
A parody of the 70’s-style Kung Fu movies (replace “Ping Pong” for “Kung Fu”), “Balls of Fury” is a mildly entertaining bit of fluff, and you find yourself chuckling from time to time at the antics of an inept FBI agent (George Lopez) convincing a washed-up former Ping Pong protégé (Dan Fogler) to train to enter a Triad-sponsored tournament. A few humorous bits at least keep you relatively amused.
Until Christopher Walken shows up.
Christopher Walken STEALS this movie. It’s like he’s Christopher Walken doing Kevin Pollack doing Christopher Walken. He’s totally in on all the jokes that are done about him (could you imagine William Shatner trying this?). The sight of Christopher Walken playing a Chinese Triad warlord singing karaoke to Def Leppard was worth the price of admission.
Maggie Q, last seen as the badass Mai Lihn in “Live Free or Die Hard,” this time is a badass Ping Pong coach, the daughter of the blind Master Wong (James Hong). I’m not usually one to throw stones, but Dan Fogler is pretty much a pig, and when he and Maggie started playing tonsil hockey, I think I threw up in the back of my mouth a little bit.
But I couldn’t just walk out, because – hey – Christopher Walken, right?
Some other pretty good names showed up here. Thomas Lennon (“Reno 911”) was the hyper East German nemesis Karl Wolfschtagg, and Deidrich Bader (“The Drew Carey Show,” “Napoleon Dynamite”) had a ball as Gary the Love Slave.
Don’t ask.
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