No balls-up for Stiller

The nice thing about this fairly gross comedy is its lack of pretension. Writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber delivers a goofy parody that doesn't have quite enough good jokes but somehow makes you want it to succeed.

Ben Stiller, looking as daft as usual and glorying in it, plays the muscle-mad owner of a smart gym. Next door is Vince Vaughn's debt-ridden fitness establishment, which Stiller wants to take over.

To raise cash, Vaughn enters a slobbish team in a cable channel's dodgeball contest, hires Rip Torn's maniacal coach and hopes for the best. The slobs meet Stiller's highly-trained mob in the final - and guess who somehow wins? The film doesn't go for anything other than belly laughs and creates some through sheer élan. The sight of Stiller testing himself with a hamburger he badly wants to eat, using electrolodes on his nipples that will zap when he takes a bite, is quite something.

The rest of the cast go to it with a will, especially Torn, who, seated in a wheelchair, tells his trainees: "If you can dodge traffic, you can dodge a ball."

Why is this peculiar sport not in the Olympics?

DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story
Cert: 12A