Strange mixture of ping pong and Enter the Dragon is never really as funny as it should be but coasts along on oddball charm till it runs out of steam during a protracted and predictable ending.
Dan Fogler stars as Randy Daytona, one-time ping pong phenom who lost his desire for the game after losing to East German Karl Wolfschtagg (co-writer Thomas Lennon).
Years later, he’s recruited by FBI Agent Ernie Rodriguez (George Lopez) to infiltrate the underground ping pong tournament of mysterious Feng (Christopher Walken), where he might also get a chance to prove himself against his one-time rival.
Fogler is quite good as Daytona, bearing the brunt of the film’s jokes but never going overboard or straying out of character; Walken (as expected) steals the show as Feng – his introduction, after a painfully long setup, is particularly funny.
The ping pong scenes are also a highlight, with great stuntwork and seamless digital effects providing some ridiculous gameplay.
But there’s a point where a film stops becoming a parody and starts becoming a clone, and by the end of this film, with the filmmakers no longer interested in comedy, only in wrapping up a needlessly complicated plot, that point had been reached
If I wanted to watch Enter the Dragon, I’d be watching that film. Still fun for a while.
