Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story – Blu-ray Disc Review

December 8, 2008 – 4:20 PM --- by: Danielle Byington

Tags: Al Kaplon, Alan Tudyk, Ben Stiller, Chris Williams, Christine Taylor, Chuck Norris, David Hasselhoff, FOX, Gary Cole, Hank Azaria, Jamal Duff, Jason Bateman, Joel Moore, Justin Long, Lance Armstrong, Missi Pyle, Rawson Marshall Thurber, Rip Torn, Stephen Root, Vince Vaughn

has an average rating of 6.6 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio
include basic DVD ports in Standard Def
–
– 2004
– 93 minutes
– FOX
–

Overall Verdict – At Least Worth A Rental

Buy it for $25.99 @ Amazon.com

— Review written by: Danielle Byington —

A Clip from the Film:

The Movie Itself is written/directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber. The movie centers on the financially failing Average Joe’s Gym, owned by Peter La Fleur (Vince Vaughn). About 8 months behind on utility payments, and lacking collection of 13 member fees, Peter is payed a visit by the lawyer, Kate Veatch (Christine Taylor), handling the financial issues, and the purchase of Average Joe’s Gym by big-wig fitness-freak White Goodman (Ben Stiller). Owner of Globo Gym, White and his ridiculous hardcore attitude about fitness, wants to buy out the misfit-haven that is Average Joe’s Gym and turn it into part of his extreme commodity to help build his empire.

As a final resort, the unique outcast attendees of Average Joe’s Gym are pitched the idea by a co-member to participate in an international dodgeball competition held in Las Vegas, which yields a $50,000 grand prize; the perfect amount for Peter to pay off his gym’s financial troubles. So, to begin the newly-declared dodgeball team’s tutoring in the very random sport, the gym-misfits, including Steve the Pirate (Alan Tudyk), a modern-day pirate, and Gordon (Stephen Root), husband to a mail-order-bride, gather for a viewing of a black & white documentary-styled film about the game, featuring Patches O’Houlihan (Rip Torn). O’Houlihan is a legend in the said sport, and the decades-old film seems to inspire just enough confidence in Peter’s team to play their first trial; against girl scouts. Team “Average Joes” physically loses the game, though wins on a technicality of a girl scout testing positive for steroid use, pushing the misfits forward into the tournament.

Celebrating their win at a bar that night, the team has the misfortune of encountering White and his new dodgeball team, feature players by the names of Lazer, Blade, Blazer, and a foreign feature to his team, Fran (Missi Pyle), whose throw is as fierce as her uni-brow. After this annoying crossing-of-paths, the “Average Joes” are approached by a raw man in a wheelchair; Patches O’Houlihan himself, who none-the-less, wants to help the team with his classical conditioning. By classical, this includes throwing large wrenches at the team members, and making them dodge on-coming rush hour traffic; because if they can evade these things, they can dodge a ball.

The intense training of O’Houlihan may be the element that pushed the team to their dramatically improved skills, taking on each team at the tournament one by one successfully. As the team’s anxiety of taking on the Globo Gym fitness-nuts tears at their belief in themselves, and whether Peter wants to go through with it or not at the offers of more than enough to take care of his financial worries, they rely on the trust they have with each other, being the out-of-place random individuals they are, to physically and mentally fight against the shallow fitness-franchise attempting to take away their home.

Overall, the film is comically what you’d expect from a cast involving Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller, with slightly silly humor, but not trying too hard, like we see in some Will Ferrell comedies. The UNRATED cut of the film here only contains a minute or so of new material in regards to that. Not a whole lot of new stuff in this version you didn’t see theatrically or previously on DVD.

Video Quality on this release is in full 1080p using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on a BD-50 (50 gigabyte dual-layered Blu-ray Disc) in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. In a comparison of the film’s DVD release, this High definition transfer from 35MM film does has an impressive difference, with a more vibrant color palette, a more solid black level, and finer detail; but, in the world of Blu-ray standards, the release is mostly mediocre. There is a moderate amount of detail, but simply not any feeling of visual depth to the look of the film. The black level is adequately solid, showing off the vivid colors seen through out the film, which does tend to have a “bright” look to it, and nicely accurate fleshtones. There is a very slight amount of film grain/noise present, and no signs of filters used such as Digital Noise Reduction (DNR), or Edge Enhancement (EE), and also no signs of compression issues. Overall, as the video on this release is an improvement from the DVD, it is just a bit average on Blu-ray, receiving a “3.5 Star Rating“.

Audio Quality on this release is presented in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio. The audio on this release is primarily dialogue-based for the first half of the film which is presently primarily through the front center channel, though this doesn’t mean sound effects and such are let go; the particular impact of a wrench striking Justin Long’s character in the face has quite the “ding” to it, as do all other sound effects. A certain negative I will mention, however, is a massive lack of rear channel presence, particularly through the first half of the movie. With only a couple of subtle sounds presented, finally at the run-time of 47 minutes and 10 seconds the cheering crowd is heard with surrounding definition from the dodgeball championship’s audience. There is a small amount of bass presence through out the film, mostly in conjunction with the actual dodgeball tournament, but it’s nothing that really rattles the room. Overall, the audio quality for this release receives a “3.5 Star Rating“.

Bonus Materials are presented in Standard Definition using Dolby Digital 2.0.

• “Feature-Length Commentary By Writer/Director Rawson Marshall Thurber And Actors Ben Stiller And Vince Vaughn“
• Deleted/Extended Scenes (12 minutes) includes optional commentary by writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber, and includes 10 scenes; the first scene involving the “Cowboy Cardio” is absolutely hilarious.
• “Dodgeball Boot Camp: Training For Dodgeball” (3 minutes) involves the cast discussing the dodgeball drills they had to endure to prepare for the physically demanding film.
• “The Anatomy Of A Hit” (3 minutes) involves a behind the scenes look at the actors taking real strikes to the face and body shots, as the crew and cast discuss the comedy of unexpected pain.
• “Justin Long: A Study In Ham & Cheese” (3 minutes) is basically several outtakes from a few scenes involving the actor.
• “Dodgeball: Go For The Gold” (1 minute) involves Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn pushing dodgeball as a serious sport that could spawn interest in real-life athletes.
• Bloopers/Gag Reel (3 minutes) is a pretty comical addition; even one of David Hasselhoff coaching the German team, and taking a second to page Kit.
• “More With The Dodgeball Dancers” (2 minutes) with an introduction by Rawson Marshall Thurber, you get three different dance-sequences of the “Dodgeball Dancers”.

Overall the bonus materials we get here are pretty much a large disappointment in comparison to those found on the previous DVD releases. No new footage really added, no new content and just overall a basic set of supplemental material earns this a weak “2 Star Rating” for bonus materials.

Blu-ray Disc packaging:

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