Balls of Fury

This is about as good as a movie about a former ping-pong champion going undercover to infiltrate a crime lord’s ping-pong tournament could be. Dan Fogler is pretty gosh-darned funny as Randy Daytona, who choked during an Olympic table tennis competition and wound up performing dinner theater here in Reno. The FBI enlists his help in trying to take down the infamous Feng (Christopher Walken), a gun trafficker who also holds sudden death ping-pong tournaments where contestants really do die. Created by the guys who did Reno 911 (man, they have a terrible view of Reno), it has enough laughs to mildly recommend. Also, kudos to the special effects crew with their ping-pong antics. Some of the tournaments are actually quite exciting. I’ll be curious to see what Fogler does in the future. If he can make this worth watching, it will be interesting to see what he does in a real movie.