Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story Critic Reviews

Modestly amusing teen summer comedy. Read the full review

It's coarse, primitive, regressive, often very stupid, and sometimes, against all odds, really a hoot.Read the full review

The movie's a treasure of small gems.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

Gleefully commingles slapstick and scatology, satire and sentiment, in a free-wheeling farce aimed at making auds laugh until they're thoroughly ashamed of themselves.Read the full review

Mostly, Dodgeball just feels off--never consistently funny, but also never dire. It's as if Thurber resigned himself to making a dumb, formula-bound movie with a dusting of smart gags instead of a smart movie in dumb-movie clothes. Read the full review

In outline, the story is pretty funny, and the film's outlandish takes on sports-movie conventions deliver some laughs. But Thurber chooses the low road to those laughs so often that he undermines his own satirical design. His actors certainly deliver amusing, spirited performances, but again, they get done in by relentless adolescent humor. Read the full review

Hilariously fake and rude. And thus true and tonic, if you know what I mean.Read the full review

Mean-spirited vulgarity and homosexual panic. Read the full review