If just thinking about Christopher Walken makes you laugh out loud, consider seeing Balls Of Fury, a film that understands and appreciates weirdness.

The film combines martial-arts moves, speed-of-light ping-pong action and general stupidity to good comic effect.

Also, there's farting.

Dan Fogler stars as Randy Daytona, a former child star of ping-pong. Working the washed-up circuit in Reno as a ping-pong illusionist, Daytona is brought back into the game by the FBI. He's to help the FBI get close to a master criminal named Feng who happens to be a ping-pong fanatic. (As the FBI agent, George Lopez is a highlight of the film.)

Getting close to Feng requires re-training, which brings blind ping-pong coach Master Wong (James Hong) into the story, along with his beautiful niece Maggie (Maggie Q) and introduces endless material spoofing every kung-fu movie ever made, little grasshopper.

Maggie, the love interest, cannot be defeated at the ping-pong table; she also slices and dices the crap out of anyone foolish enough to challenge her to a fight. Master Wong, wise but inscrutable, offers the sort of guidance that is not only useless but insulting.

It's all fairly amusing. People fall down a lot and someone actually gets chopsticks up the nostrils, so once Randy Daytona works his way up to the dark, seamy underworld of illegal ping-pong, the movie is ready for an injection of new life.

Enter Christopher Walken in a pigtail. Walken and his henchmen (and henchwomen) run a criminal ping-pong tournament in which the losers die. You'll notice Terry Crews, Thomas Lennon, Diedrich Bader and the usual list of suspects so crucial to any successful puerile comedy.

Sexist, racist and homophobic, Balls Of Fury is nonetheless good-hearted and oddly inoffensive in its offensiveness. We can't explain that, really.

We can tell you that the scenes of competitive ping-pong are exhilarating and funny, as are the over-the-top martial arts fight scenes.

Also, everyone in the movie appears to be having a very good time, an attractive quality in a comedy. You may laugh out loud in spite of yourself.

This review is 100% free of harmful, double-entendre 'balls' jokes.

(This film is rated PG-13)
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