Dodgeball

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details about Dodgeball's classification and consumer advice lines
• a review of Dodgeball completed by Young Media Australia (YMA) on 28 September 2004.

Overall comments and recommendations

Dodgeball is a satirical comedy containing rude and crude humour that caters for a particular mentality. Its main funny bone is its satirical look at American feel-good sports movies, and the manner in which it sends up American TV coverage and hosting of obscure and minimal sports. Ben Stiller and Rip Torn give entertaining performances; however, in terms of story line there is very little that will entertain the adult audience.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) and the associated consumer advice lines.

YMA review

This review of the movie Dodgeball contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• use of violence
• material that may scare children
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie's message

A synopsis of the story

White Goodman is a man obsessed with his own image and ego. White owns Globo Gym, a lucrative high-tech gym that caters for narcissistic people. Across the road is the low-tech Average Joe's Gym, owned by Peter La Fleur, and catering for losers and misfits. La-Fleur is somewhat slack about collecting membership fees, and as a result is behind with the mortgage. White, obsessed with getting rid of La Fleur buys La Fleur's mortgage from the bank. To stop the bank foreclosing, La Fleur must find $50,000 by the end of the month.

To pay off the bank, La Fleur and his band of misfits, who have never played Dodgeball, decide to enter the American Dodgeball Championship in Las Vegas in the hope of winning $50,000. After winning a qualifying match (by default) against girl scouts, the team is taken under the wing of coach Patches O'Houlihan, a wheelchair bound maniac who gets his team to practise by dodging wrenches and speeding cars instead of balls. Kate Veatch, the lawyer for the bank foreclosing Average Joe's Gym, despises Goodman, and decides to join La Fleur's dodgeball team after suffering a number of Goodman's advances. After surviving wrenches to the head and collisions with cars, the team heads for Las Vegas and the dodgeball championship. However, fearing the possibility of Average Joe's winning the prize money, Goodman enters his own Globo Gym dodgeball super team.

Things begin to hot up as both Average Joe's and Globo Gym make it to the finals. Fearing defeat, Goodman offers La Fleur $100,000 to sign over the ownership of Average Joe's. La Fleur has to do some soul searching to decide what he will do.

Use of violence

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

The aim of dodgeball is to throw a basketball type ball at an opposing player with the intention of hitting the player with the ball. There are numerous scenes throughout the film involving people being hit in the face, stomach and groin, including a girl scout being hit in the stomach.

Most of the violence is presented in a comical slapstick manner such as dodgeball participants being hit in the groin by balls, hit in the head by wrenches and struck by a car while trying to dodge traffic.

There were no real life consequences resulting from the violence. For example:

• after being struck on the head by wrench thrown by Coach O'Houlihan the recipient appears uninjured by the blow.
• Kate slams Goodman's face with extreme force into a verandah post after he makes unwanted advances. Goodman appears uninjured.

Material that may scare children

Children under eight are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations, the death of a parent or child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

Children under the age of eight, particularly preschoolers could be disturbed by:

• images of people being hit by balls and wrenches.
• the aggressive and threatening appearance and nature of the coach Patches O'Houlihan and Globo Gym's muscle men.
• a girl scout being hit in the stomach by a dodgeball thrown by an adult.

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened

Most children between the ages of eight and thirteen would interpret the slapstick nature of scenes involving dodgeball related violence as comical. They may however, be scared by the aggressive, threatening appearance and nature of Patches O'Houlihan and Globo Gym's aggressive and threatening muscle men.

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

Most children over the age of thirteen years would interpret the slapstick and non-realistic nature of the dodgeball related violence as comical, and probably also interpret the aggressive and threatening appearance of coach O'Houlihan and Globo Gym's muscle men as comical.

Sexual references

Sexual innuendos were made on a frequent basis throughout the film, including the following:

• a dog licks a man's groin as the man lays sleeping and dreaming (the inference being that the man was dreaming of receiving oral sex from a woman)
• a rough looking older man watches a high school aged teenager washing the wheel of his pick-up truck. The high school boy is bending over and wearing revealing shorts with the man focussing on the boy's bottom. The inference presented is that the older man has sexual interest towards the boy.
• Goodman sits on his desk with his legs wide open and suggests to Kate, ‘we should mate, date'.

Nudity and sexual activity

There is no sexual activity or nudity in this film. However, there were numerous scenes with suggestive images and behaviour, including:

• women wearing revealing black lace lingerie
• women wearing tight fitting gym suits consisting of bikini style shorts and low cut bras
• women washing cars in revealing bikinis, covered in soap suds while rubbing their breasts against the driver's windscreen
• in one scene, Goodman is naked above the waist, with electrodes clipped to his nipples. Goodman would electrocute himself every time he thought of eating a cake placed in front of him
• it was implied that Goodman was masturbating with a piece of pizza before being interrupted by his assistant
• Kate hugs and kisses her girlfriend hard on the mouth. She states to La Fleur that she is not a lesbian but bisexual.

Use of substances

There were a few instances of substance use:

• black and white footage of a Chinese opium den with people smoking opium pipes. Verbal narration was given relating to the smoking of opium.
• Average Joe's dodgeball team drinks beer in a bar, although there were no images of intoxicated people or drunken behaviour
• La Fleur was in a bar drinking ‘shooters'. He was presented as slightly intoxicated and feeling sorry for himself. However after some reflection he instantly sobered up and left the bar.

Coarse language

Coarse language is used consistently throughout the entire film, for example:

• ‘You're as useless as a cock flavoured lolly pop'
• ‘my sweet dick'
• ‘it's like watching a bunch of retards trying to fuck a door knob'

The movie's message

The main take home message is about the underdog triumphing over the suppressor. Dodgeball is a satire of the beautiful people body image, which has a take home message of its own, that beauty is only skin deep and that it is what's underneath that is important.

Values in the movie that parents may wish to encourage include friendship, loyalty, responsibility, and endurance through adversity.

Parents may wish to discuss the manner in which the film was male dominated, with females predominantly portrayed as sexual lures.