Directed by Peter Farrelly (Ricky Stanicky) — Screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.
Peter Farrelly’s Balls Up follows product inventor Elijah DeBell (played by Paul Walter Hauser) and salesman Brad Lewison (played by Mark Wahlberg) as the mismatched duo travel to Brazil to pitch their newly developed condom, which is a condom that goes over the testicles. They, and their company, are hopeful that the condom can become ‘the official condom of the World Cup’ that the country is hosting. Even though they initially impress the representatives they meet, an incident at a party leads to them losing the deal that they were working towards. Instead, Elijah and Brad find themselves at the World Cup final, drunk and frustrated over the fact that another lesser company got the role that they had worked hard for. Feeling taunted by the World Cup mascot, Elijah and Brad run onto the pitch in the final moments of the game and are to blame for Brazil ultimately losing the match. Now, they’re stuck in Brazil, where they have become public enemies, and they have to navigate dangerous situations if they are to survive.
Stick with me here. So, in a World Cup year, in which the tournament is being hosted by America, Canada, and Mexico, they chose to have the World Cup in the film be hosted by Brazil (did no one think to change that aspect in pre-production?). This makes a part of me think this script was originally written for the 2014 World Cup (in Brazil), even though that’s probably not the case. That could go a long way to explain why the jokes are all so dated, too, even though they feel like 90s-era Farrelly jokes. Except many of those 90s era Farrelly movies are actually good, so let’s say the jokes are of the quality of the jokes left on the cutting room floor of 90s comedies.
So many of the ‘jokes’ boil down to the writers snickering and saying to themselves, “Oh, aren’t we naughty?” for having talked about or referenced genitalia. It’s not funny. Rather, it’s lazy juvenile humor. The first time I even chuckled mildly was seeing Wahlberg get hit in the face with a football (sidenote: when’s the last time he was in a good movie? All the Money in the World?). When Sacha Baron Cohen shows up as the leader of a drug cartel, he kind of livens the film up a little bit, because he’s a natural at playing over-the-top characters like the one in this film. It’s also right around here that there’s a mildly funny karaoke scene, where Wahlberg and Hauser do a duet performance of a popular song (with Wahlberg having this nasally high-pitched voice). That’s about it, though. The remaining 40-50 minutes are full of unfunny action-comedy material, seeing the central duo try to swallow their condoms (and what they’re packing), and the duo walking around in the jungle. I was also surprised by how little we see of Daniela Melchior, who I think has maybe two to three scenes here, even though she is set up as a potential savior following the inciting incident.
Seeing Wahlberg in yet another straight-to-streaming flick with few-to-no redeeming qualities is not a surprise, as that’s been the career trajectory he’s followed for the last five-to-ten years, but it’s Hauser’s appearance that’s the most disappointing, as the Richard Jewell actor has shown he’s capable of much more than this relatively recently. I’m assuming this means Hollywood just isn’t giving him the opportunities he should be getting. It’s also strange to see that this was written by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, whose Deadpool and Zombieland films are evidence of the fact that they can actually write funny jokes, even if you don’t find any of those in this unfunny, overlong, juvenile, and dated film.
3 out of 10
– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
