Running Time: 104 Minutes
Certification: 15
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Paul Walter Hauser, Sacha Baron Cohen, Benjamin Bratt, Luciano Szafir, Eva De Dominici, Daniela Melchior, Molly Shannon, Chelsey Crisp, Eric André
Across his career of thirty-plus years, director Peter Farrelly has delivered such memorable jokes which have lasted in the public consciousness. These include Jeff Daniels' explosive diarrhea in Dumb & Dumber, Cameron Diaz's spunky hairstyle in There's Something About Mary, and Green Book winning Best Picture. His most recent works have not delivered in memorable ways, and Balls Up does not just continue that tradition, it drives it into the ground.
Having worked on a brand-new condom which also covers the balls, marketing executives Elijah (Paul Walter Hauser) and Brad (Mark Wahlberg) are eager to have their latest product be the sponsor of the World Cup in Brazil. Their drunken celebrations during the final leads them to cause an international incident, resulting in the pair trying to return home alive while the whole country is furious at them.
It is admittedly a long-winded set-up which becomes unnecessarily complicated, taking far too long to reach the inciting incident. I still do not understand why the characters had to hit rock-bottom before even reaching Brazil. Considering all of that results in a film which doesn't capitalise on an entire country out to get the characters, a film whose idea of a joke is another mention of balls, that is more laughable than anything within the film itself.
What feels bizarre is how this comes from Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, a duo who have delivered effective comedy with Zombieland and the Deadpool films. They surely would have written actual jokes, even if it is not your cup of tea, so the missing nature of them is baffling. Instead, we have Sacha Baron Cohen doing tiresome things with a jarring accent, a set-piece involving a vampire fish being pulled out of a penis, and a bizarre duet of Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know. There is a smile-worthy gag involving a translator app voiced by Larry David, but this feels like finding a needle within a haystack of lame moments.
Remember when Matt Damon claimed that Netflix want a film to restate its plot multiple times, so that people on their phones will not miss anything? That feels like a lesson which Amazon adopted here, as an early scene has the character's personalities spelled out so that anybody with a sense of hearing can understand these polar opposites complete one-another. Elijah is a smart inventor with confidence issues, while Brad is a born salesman who indulges in the worst impulses. Will they learn and grow while spending time in each-other's company? You would think so, but nobody seemed to tell the filmmakers that.
The first thing that viewers see is Elijah stumbling his way through a practice pitch-meeting, while an early scene involves Brad imploding the life of a recovering alcoholic by pressuring him to drink. You would think that such a dangerous journey would lead the pair to grow in confidence or start considering others, yet the arcs are non-existent. Instead, a sudden moment arrives in the last five-minutes to try convincing you that Elijah has grown some balls, or that Brad is becoming less of a scrotum. In both instances, they are too blatantly lazy to ever convince, while there is little material for the actors to sell this friendship.
I have seen people referring to this as an old-school film, something which I disbelieve because we have never escaped unfunny comedies that waste talented cast-members. This is just a low-point amidst Mark Wahlberg's straight-to-streaming era, and that's saying something when he snarled his way through Flight Risk while looking like a shaved ballsack. In short, Balls Up is utter bollocks.
Balls Up is available to stream on Prime Video
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