Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
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Image:Movie poster Dodgeball A True Underdog Story.jpg Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story is a comedy from 20th Century Fox, written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber and available on DVD or VHS.
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 called Globo Gym. Vaughn leads the Average Joe's team to a classic underdog win at the last moment in a sudden death playoff, utilizing the "5 D's of Dodgeball": Dodge, duck, dip, dive, and ... dodge. The film features cameos by celebrities such as Lance Armstrong, Chuck Norris, David Hasselhoff and William Shatner.
The DVD features an alternate ending in which the Average Joe's team loses and the movie ends thereafter. The audio commentary by director Rawson Marshall Thurber indicates that this was the original ending to the film, something many critics and Internet reviewers picked up and reported as fact. However, this does not take into account that the main commentary track for this film was recorded as a tongue-in-cheek spat between the director and two stars, making it unlikely that the director's commentary accompanying the alternate ending should be taken seriously.
Despite relying largely on goofy comedy, the movie was relatively well-received by viewers and critics. Some even viewed the movie as a parody of sports tales as well as society's less-than-obscure social classes. 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.
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Cast and roles include
- Vince Vaughn - Peter La Fleur
- Ben Stiller - White Goodman
- Christine Taylor - Kate Veatch
- Rip Torn - Patches O'Houlihan
- Justin Long - Justin
- Stephen Root - Gordon
- Joel Moore - Owen
- Chris Williams - Dwight
- Alan Tudyk - Steve the Pirate
- Missi Pyle - Fran
- Jamal Duff - Me'Shell Jones
- Gary Cole - Cotton McKnight
- Jason Bateman - Pepper Brooks
- Hank Azaria - Young Patches O'Houlihan
- Al Kaplon - Tournament Referee
- Lance Armstrong - Himself
- Chuck Norris - Himself
- William Shatner - Dodgeball Chancellor
- David Hasselhoff - German Coach/Himself
Institutions in the movie
- ESPN 8 ("The Ocho"): "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 the Spanish-language "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 come back on the field)
- No stepping beyond the red line which cuts the field horizontally
- Sudden death: If all players from both teams are eliminated, one player from both teams will participate in this overtime from two triangles facing each other. The first player to hit his opponent wins; catching is irrelevant.
Goofs
- The beginning of the film, the globo-gym commercial, confirms that the film takes place in 1993 (by way of White Goodman showing a picture of himself in 1987, and then saying it was six years later. However, while the commercial might have been recorded in 1993 and is still being aired, this is quite unlikely). However, a cameo appearance by Lance Armstrong makes the movie seem as though it were set in the 2000's, as Lance Armstrong was only diagnosed with Cancer in 1996, and won his first Tour de France in 1999.
- Also Mona Lisa Smile is listed as one of the DVD's Peter has overdue. This movie was certainly not released in 1993 and DVD players were not invented in 1993.
