Condoms: They’re Not Just For Sex Anymore
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be coming soon. (Note: Anything in bold blue [or near purple] is a link to something in the above title or the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
However, if you’d like to know more about rationale of my ratings visit this explanatory site.
Balls Up (Peter Farrelly) rated R 104 min.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
WHAT HAPPENS: Elijah DeBell (Paul Walter Hauser), product designer, and Brad Lewison (Mark Wahlberg), crack salesman, work for Regal Blue Condom Co. hoping to become an official sponsor of the 2025 World Cup with Elijah’s new invention—covers the testicles along with the penis. Their pitch to Brazil’s Senhor Santos (Benjamin Bratt) goes so well that not only do they get the contract but also during the celebration Santos drops his 9 years of sobriety for booze, drugs, and a naked balcony jump, resulting in Santos’ firing by Brazil’s president, a cancelled contract, financial woes for Regal Blue, firing for Brad and Elijah. However, 3 months later long-ago arranged packets for Brad and Elijah arrive, giving them tickets to the World Cup Final of rivals Brazil and Argentina, first class air to Rio de Janeiro, where at the match they’re drunk, Elijah’s mad about a rival condom company’s sponsorship, misinterprets an inflatable linguica mascot as a penis from the rival, runs onto the field to attack it (followed by Brad), resulting in a failed Brazil goal as Argentina wins 1-0. (What? No penalty kick?) When in jail our boys reject Public Defender efforts of Antonia (Daniela Melchior), then are surprisingly released by Minister of Defense Cristos (Luciano Szafir) only to be attacked on the streets by angry Brazilians, saved by now-cabbie Santos, taken by thugs of drug lord Pavio Curto Bundchen (Sasha Baron Cohen) who hates soccer (sorry, futbal) but wants to use those condoms as cocaine smugglers if they can be swallowed; Brad and Elijah must oblige.
As Pavio’s wife, Emilia (Eva De Dominici), seduces Brad to anger/stimulate her husband there’s an attack on the compound so our guys escape into the jungle where they pass their cocaine condoms, only to be met by an alligator who eats the drugs, dies. Next, Brad and Elijah meet a group of U.S. ex-pat eco-warriors who welcome them warmly until surveillance footage shows the death of the gator, forcing our guys to flee on a small raft. The next hurdle comes from tiny vampire fish, attracted to human urine, with one finding its way into Brad’s penis as he pees over the side of the raft, with Elijah having to make an uncomfortable extraction. ⇒They’re caught by Cristos, but he lets then go again, just because a little farther downstream they’ll go over an enormous waterfall. Using inflated condoms they survive the descent but face armed soldiers; the good news (finally) is they’re all now in Argentina (Antonia’s in the squad; turns out she was a spy in Brazil, really named Isadora Costa) where our guys are celebrated as heroes due to the World Cup victory, so they become men of honor even as their condoms become a national product of Argentina.⇐ (I think my late Argentine friend/colleague, Dr. Mario Cavallari, would have found this silliness to be hilarious.) I can’t lead you to more plot details, but this site offers further background information.
SO WHAT? My recent, post-Oscars decision to limit my ongoing reviews to whatever I can find on streaming of 2026 releases has recently resulted in some less-than-ideal choices, such as last week’s posting about Outcome (Jonah Hill), exploring Hollywood insider problems, with a plot that doesn’t have much of an outcome—even though I still found it more interesting than did the overall OCCU—and this week leaves me with a raunchy comedy that left our (me and Nina) regular viewing partner saying this is either the worst movie he’s ever seen or he has a decidedly-different sense of humor. Nevertheless, despite another OCCU emphatic rejection (more details just below), I did find Balls Up to have enough humor I could respond to, allowing me to at least appreciate it better than Outcome even though my critical brethren could hardly agree with me less. Maybe I’m just giving the director (and screenwriters here Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick) more credit than they deserve because I still have strong memories of hilarity in There's Something About Mary (Peter and Bobby Farrelly, 1998)—with marvelously-idiotic performances by Ben Stiller, Cameron Diaz, Matt Dillon—another borders-on-tasteless comedy but one that pulled in a much-more encouraging CCAL response (Rotten Tomatoes 84%, Metacritic 69%), doubly-better than their opinion of Balls Up. So, I guess until such fare as Project Hail Mary (Phil Lord, Christopher Miller) and The Drama (Kristoffer Borgli) finds its way to my Roku device I’ll just have to keep looking for the best things I can find for you, with hopes the results are a bit better than these limited movies I’ve recently found.
Nevertheless, if the sort of comedy where a dangerous little fish partially makes its way into a man’s penis and his friend has to pull it out with his teeth appeals to you, Balls Up may be a lot more satisfying that the critical establishment would have you believe about it. One final note here is that if your memory seems to be failing you, the 2025 World Cup Final (won by Chelsea over Paris Saint-German) took place in the USA, had nothing to do with Brazil and Argentina, and shouldn’t be confused with the 2026 World Cup which will occur this summer with matches again in the USA (depending on whatever crazy difficulties President Trump may come up with if he’s managed to slither out of his war with Iran by then) but also in Canada's and Mexico's North American locations.
BOTTOM LINE FINAL COMMENTS: You won’t find much enthusiasm for Balls Up from the OCCU: Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews are at the near-dismissal level of 26% and Metacritic average score is surprisingly-higher at 34% (just 8 reviews so far, though; maybe check back later). As an example of those who found this movie barely worth their time to watch is Frank Scheck (MC 40%) of The Hollywood Reporter who says: "It’s a genre that has fallen out of favor at the box office, which doesn’t seem surprising considering that the sight and sound of Jeff Daniels uncontrollably pooping [Dumb and Dumber {Peter and Bobby Farrelly, Bennett Yellin, 1994}] are not things that need to be experienced in premium formats. Hence this film premiering not in theaters but on Prime Video, and not being screened in advance for the press. […] this is a film that could really have used the manic energy of a Jack Black or Jim Carrey. Instead of feeling gleefully transgressive, it comes across as just another streaming-era time-filler.” You'd be able to find many reviews of this type, yet, there are others (including me) who don’t find it that awful, such as Andrew Lawrence (MC 60%, equates to my 3 of 5 stars) of The Guardian (U.K.) who counters the many naysayers with these thoughts: “Prime Video at the very least should have given it the chance to stand on its own merits in a theatrical release – where, one suspects, this ribald delight would have had little trouble finding an audience, especially among football fans looking for an escape from the doom and gloom the host nation has brought to this year’s tournament. […] juvenile entertainment, handled by professionals. No, Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, the scriptwriters, can’t resist the low-hanging fruit, down to the literal bananas. But as with their Deadpool work, they layer it with compounding stakes, spicy dialogue and characters with no sense of their own humor.” I agree.
As noted by Lawrence, if you want to indulge in this bucket of bawdy humor you’ll need to turn to streaming where it’s free to Amazon Prime Video subscribers (or, if not, you can get a 30-day free trial, then pay $13.98 [cheaper than a couple of theater tickets] per month for as long as you’d like to explore their extensive collection). While you’re deciding about those choices you can listen to my usual review-ending device of a Musical Metaphor, this time Creedence Clearwater Revival’s "Run Through the Jungle" (1970 hit, on Cosmo’s Factory album) in reference to Brad and Elijah’s final cluster of challenges (with the song actually about gun control, not the frequent interpretation of being an anti-Vietnam War statement): “Woah, thought it was a nightmare / Lord, it’s all so true / They told me, don’t go walkin’ slow/ The Devil’s on the loose.” My link to the original recording comes from when John Fogerty was still in the group (he left in 1972), but if you want something with more instrumental breaks (twice as long), here’s the 1998 version from (nicely ironic) Buenos Aires.
SHORT TAKES
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