DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story (2004)
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber
When megalomaniacal White Goodman, the owner of a trendy, high-end fitness center, makes a move to take over the struggling local gym run by happy-go-lucky Pete La Fleur, there's only one way for La Fleur to fight back: dodgeball. Aided by a dodgeball guru and Goodman's attorney, La Fleur and his rag-tag team of underdogs launch a knock-down, drag-out battle in which the winner takes all.
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What critics compared DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story to
In his version of the Blissfield Butcher, Vaughn gets the opportunity to combine his goofy, motor-mouthed style from Wedding Crashers and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story with the more foreboding, physically intimidating vibe of his work in True Detective season 2 and Brawl in Cell Block 99 .
The latter gets to cut loose comedically in a way he hasn’t in ages, the Wedding Crashers and Dodgeball star clearly having a blast channeling his mystified inner high school girl.
The film even borrows the "wacky commentator" schtick from the likes of Dodgeball, Best In Show or Baseketball, and does it really well.
Thurber also wrote and directed Notice, which ends his sporadic but effective run of uncomplicated outings from conceptual comedies like Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story or We’re the Millers to credible Die Hard knockoffs like 2019’s Skyscraper , which also starred Johnson.
Lifting its title from Interpol’s most-wanted list, “Dodgeball” director Rawson Marshall Thurber’s twisty treasure-hunt lark “Red Notice” blurs the lines between good guys and bad guys, and instead focuses on which of two notorious art thieves is better at breaking the law: sarcastic master forger Nolan Booth (a reliably whiny Ryan Reynolds) or his upscale nemesis, known only as “the Bishop” (a more wine-and-diney Gal Gadot).
With Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds in the fold, along with Thurber’s comedy background — he directed Dodgeball and We’re the Millers — Red Notice ’s comedic verve should be in the bag.
Honestly, Red Notice is the filmmaker’s best outing since DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story .
Written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, who began his career as an ace comedy filmmaker (We’re the Millers, Dodgeball) before swerving into action-comedy with Johnson in tow (Central Intelligence, Skyscraper), Red Notice leaps and bounds from one international setpiece to the next: from a Russian prison break to a bonkers underground copper mine chase.
Had The Art of Self Defense, the new film by writer-director Riley Stearns, come out just a few years ago, one could imagine it as a light-hearted trifle of an indie comedy, or perhaps even an outrageous, Dodgeball-style bro-com.
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Miri hopes to seduce her old crush Bobby (Brandon Routh, "Superman Returns") at the bash, but Zack discovers Bobby's sexual orientation in talking to Bobby's date Brandon (Justin Long, "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story," "Alvin and the Chipmunks"), a gay porn actor who switches on a light bulb for the coffee jockeying schlub.