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Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (or commonly referred to as "Dodgeball") is a 2004 comedy film from 20th Century Fox, written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber and starring Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Christine Taylor, and Rip Torn. The film focuses on a rivalry between the owners of Average Joe's, a small gym, and Globo-Gym, a competing big-budget gym located across the street. Peter LaFleur (Vaughn), the owner of the smaller gym, has defaulted on his mortgage and enters a dodgeball tournament in an attempt to earn the money necessary to prevent his gym from being purchased by Globo-Gym. Globo-Gym enters a team in the tournament in an effort to ensure that Average Joe's gym fails. Dodgeball received generally good reviews, with a 70% average rating on Rotten Tomatoes.[1] The film was largely a commercial success, grossing over $30 million in its first week and eventually grossed more than $114 million domestically.
PlotPeter LaFleur (Vaughn) is the laid-back, down-to-earth owner of Average Joe's, a failing gym with a handful of loyal, but eccentric, members, including Steve the Pirate (Tudyk), Justin (Long), Gordon (Root), and employees Dwight (Williams) and Owen (Moore). His rival, White Goodman (Stiller), owner of the glamorous Globo-Gym located across the street, has purchased Average Joe's defaulted mortgage. Therefore, Peter must raise $50,000 in 30 days in order to redeem the equity of redemption on the about-to-be-foreclosed mortgage, or else Goodman will successfully foreclose upon Average Joe's Gym and demolish it for a parking garage. Working on this transaction is attorney Kate Veatch (Taylor), whom White attempts and fails to charm on multiple different occasions. However, Veatch and Peter develop a friendship despite her role in his business troubles. After various half-hearted attempts at money-raising fail, Gordon declares that they can win the money needed to pay the redemption costs by winning a dodgeball competition in Las Vegas, and begin to train to enter the tournament. The team watches a 1950s-style training film featuring legendary dodgeball star Patches O'Houlihan to learn about dodgeball. By spying on them, White learns of their plans to enter the contest, and decides to enter it himself to avoid Average Joe's gym rasing the money needed to pay off their debts, so forms a super-powerful team which he names "The Purple Cobras". The Average Joe's team manages to enter the tournament by default after their first opponents, a Girl Scout troop, are disqualified after one of their members fails a drug test. After celebrating this initial win, Peter is approached by Patches O’Houlihan (Torn), a legendary but now wheelchair-bound former dodgeball player, who offers to coach the team. Despite possessing questionable and painful training methods (such as dodging cars, and throwing wrenches at them), the team begin to steadily improve. Kate, although reluctantly at first, demonstrates that she has substantial potential as a dodgeball player, and agrees to join their team after finally reaching her limit with White’s inept, arrogant attempts at courting her (including having her fired so he would not be dating an employee). At the tournament, which was to be held in Las Vegas, the team proves to be an underdog success, who wins over the audience. Despite numerous set-backs, such as ordering the wrong kit, Average Joes successfully make it through to the final, where they will face White’s team, The Purple Cobras. The night beforehand, the team's confidence takes a severe hit when Patches is inadvertently killed by a falling billboard. White meets with Peter and offers him one hundred thousand dollars to hand over the Average Joe's deed and forfeit the upcoming finals match. The team begins to drift apart, several are distracted away from the final, Steve having been discouraged by Peter and a hate attack, while Justin has been asked by his classmate Amber to help them in their cheerleading championship. Justin arrives on time but they do not have enough players turn up to compete. Peter – his confidence shattered – seems to be about to desert his friends when he bumps into Lance Armstrong, who motivates him to return. He arrives just before the Average Joes are to be forfeited from the final, but a tie-breaking vote from judge Chuck Norris allows them to play. The final match pits the Average Joes against the Purple Cobras led by White. After a close final, the tournament comes down to a sudden-death playoff between White and Peter; inspired by a vision of the deceased Patches, a blindfolded Peter manages to dodge White’s shot and strike him, winning the match. Although White reveals that Peter did, in fact, sell the gym the night before, Peter replies by revealing that he had used the money to bet on Average Joes to win (at 50-to-1 odds), winning enough to buy a controlling stake in Globo-Gym (which now includes Average Joes), thus buying White out. After this, Kate is seen re-uniting with her lesbian lover, to which Peter and Dwight watch on in shock. Kate then reveals she isn't lesbian, but bi-sexual, and kisses Peter. The Average Joes become a success, Justin's girlfriend Amber becomes pregnant, and White drowns his sorrows in junk food, becoming obese again as a result. Original endingIn a DVD extra, director Rawson Marshall Thurber shows a joke "director's cut" with the movie ending in the Average Joes' defeat. In that version, the line of dialogue "They came here for absolutely nothing" was the last of the movie, immediately preceding the credits roll. Thurber states in the DVD commentary that, due to poor screen testing, the studio forced him to replace that ending with one mandated by the studio, which was the one seen in theaters. Thurber further states in the DVD commentary that he was so incensed by the studio's actions that he "left the film for a week," and that he continues to believe that depicting the defeat of the Average Joes was "the right way to end the movie!" Thurber has also said that in the early drafts of the script, the Average Joes did lose, but the plot concept was "balanced" by one depicting Steve the Pirate returning from an absence with a large amount of money he had won at Treasure Island after a person driving through the Fremont Street Experience told him to go back there. Cast
ReceptionThe film received mostly positive reviews from critics, although Slant Magazine dismissed the movie as "a less-than-one-joke film"[2], while TV Guide remarked that Ben Stiller "doesn't know when to stop."[3] Other critics, such as the Boston Globe, praised Stiller's satiric take on male virility and praised the chemistry between Vince Vaughn and Christine Taylor.[4] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a 70% "fresh" rating out of 151 reviews, with 105 of the reviews being positive. The film was mostly praised for its "cheerfully sloppy, dumb fun" according to the website. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story proved to be a large success upon its release. In its first week, the film grossed over $30 million, eventually grossing a domestic total of $114,324,072.[5] Awards
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