Dodgeball A True Underdog Story
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story is a comedy from 20th Century Fox, written and directed by Rawson Thurber.
It stars Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Christine Taylor, Rip Torn, Julie Gonzalo, Stephen Root, Chris Williams, Gary Cole, Jason Bateman, and Alan Tudyk.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
The plot involves the underdog gym Average Joe's which tries to keep itself afloat by playing an important game of dodgeball against a glitzy, expensive gym Globo Gym. Vaughn leads the Average Joe's team to the classic underdog win at the last moment in a sudden death playoff. Despite being a comedy that follows the well known
"weak triumphing over the powerful" story line the movie is well directed and produced. Unlike many contemporary "stupid" comedies the movie is actually very well written and acted. The dialog contains quite a few obscure jokes that only viewers with a fair amount of background in history, literature, and pop culture will understand. Many famous people make memorable appearances at various points in the movie including Lance Armstrong, Chuck Norris, and William Shatner.
Institutions in the Movie
- ESPN 8: "If it's almost a sport, we've got it!" This network is a riff on ESPN's growing empire of sports TV networks, which in 2004 numbered 5, not counting secondary services such as "ESPN Deportes".
- The American Dodgeball Association of America: The sanctioning body for the sport who has laid down the rules as follows:
- 6 players with one ball each; no gender specifications
- Catching of the ball counts as a reversal (i.e. Another player is allowed to comeback on the field)
- No stepping beyond a red line which cuts the field horizontally
- Sudden death: If all players from both teams are eliminated, one player from both teams will particpate in this overtime from two triangles facing each other. The first player to hit his opponent wins; catching is irrelevant.
