Balls Up plus Short Takes on some other cinematic topics

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

                    

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:

 

We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts* (scroll to the bottom of this Summary page to see additional info about your wacky critic, Ken Burke, along with contact info and a great retrospective song list).  Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage.  If you’d like to Like us on Facebook (yes?) please visit our Facebook page.  We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it unto us!  Please also note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post.  You can also leave comments at our Facebook page, although you may have to somehow register with us there in order to comment (FB procedures: frequently perplexing mysteries for us aged farts).

 

*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problem’s been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.

If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here at the blog please 

use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work.

           

OUR POSTINGS PROBABLY LOOK BEST ON THE MOST CURRENT VERSIONS OF MAC OS AND THE SAFARI WEB BROWSER (although Google Chrome usually is decent also); OTHERWISE, BE FOREWARNED THE LAYOUT MAY SEEM MESSY AT TIMES.

               

Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month the total unique hits at this site were 71,591.  (As always, we thank all of you for your ongoing support with hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers.)  Below is a snapshot of where those responses have come from within the previous week (appreciation for the unspecified “Others” also visiting Two Guys’ site):

Outcome plus Short Takes on some other cinematic topics

“It would be easier sometimes to change the past”

(lyric borrowed from Jackson Brownes "Fountain of Sorrow" [1974])

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.

                    Outcome (Jonah Hill)   rated R   84 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: We first meet Reef Hawk (Keanu Reeves) as a young child signing and dancing on The Tonight Show (played by uncredited Jude Friedman) after an intro from Johnny Carson (I guess either AI-generated or a carefully-chosen clip).  Then we jump ahead years to adult Reef with his close associates/friends since high-school, Kyle (Cameron Diaz) and Xander (Matt Bomer), working with him to plan a public strategy of why—after being a mega-movie star for 4 decades, with 2 Oscars, leads in 3 profitable franchises, lots of press and public adoration—he’s been on hiatus for 5 years, as he’s loath to reveal it was a time of sobriety after years of heroin addiction when he was privately much more of an asshole than he was known to be.  However, his comeback is put on hold when he has an emergency meeting with crisis lawyer Ira Slitz (a very slimmed-down Jonah Hill), about some damaging video that could upend his career unless he pays a $15 million ransom.  Ira suggests Reef make personal apologies to everyone he’s ever wronged (a huge list it turns out) in hopes of satisfying the unknown blackmailer.  In his quest to do so, we see Reef attempt to soothe long-ago manager Richie “Red” Rodriguez (Martin Scorsese) who’s largely forgiving, ex-lover Savanna (Welker White) who bluntly puts him down, and his mother, Diana Hawk (Susan Lucci), a Real Housewives TV star who insists his apology be filmed to use on her program.

 But just before he’s about to go massively-public with a live confession on Drew Barrymore’s interview show, where consultants encouraged a portrayal as the victim, he has a change of heart, walks off the set just before airtime, Drew furious at him.  ⇒Ira solves the problem by getting the blackmailer (sorry, I didn’t get his name) to take $35K, hand over the video (which the guy found on some old computer) just because he needed cash; the content was (oddly) a split screen of Reef and a prostitute in separate motel rooms talking on the phone.  Reef wants to be a better man so he continues with the apology tour, especially toward Kyle and Xander (during the credits we see the latter jumping in for the Barrymore interview where he gets her to talk about her life after E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial [Steven Spielberg, 1982])⇐ (I can’t link you to more Outcome plot, but this source does have useful production details plus a large clump of helpful background references.)

SO WHAT? The self-imposed arbitrary restrictions I’ve recently put on myself to only review 2026 releases that can be found on streaming have already provided some difficult limits as to what I’m able to find to write about, with Outcome being a good example of something I might have passed over (close to Passover, of course) given the tepid response from the cinematic critics community (see the next section just below for details on their dismissals) had it not been for my many prior positive on-screen encounters with Reeves, Hill, and Diaz—all of whom were quite effective in their roles, with solid supporting work from the rest of the cast, especially the apology recipients I noted just above—so I was quite willing to see what they’re up to in this instance, which worked reasonably well with the initial premise but just didn’t seem to go much farther than showing Reef’s slowly-evolving sincerity as he tries to make amends with those he’s mistreated in previous years.  The whole thing ends on a rather flat note with a minimum amount of useful satire on insider-Hollywood even though that’s supposed to be the premise.  You’ll find a much-more effective version of such satire by visiting Hill’s old cinema partner, Seth Rogan, and his multiple-Emmy-winning streaming series, The Studio, which you can find for free on Apple TV, although the 10 episodes would take you about 5 hours to watch which is considerably more than the thankfully-short Outcome (written by Hill and Ezra Woods), which I somewhat enjoyed, wasn’t overly impressed by.

BOTTOM LINE FINAL COMMENTS: Outcome debuted on streaming just last weekend where it’s no cost to Apple TV subscribers (or free for 7 days, then you could pay $12.99 monthly), although the OCCU provides little encouragement to watch it with the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at a miserable 31%, the Metacritic average score at a suprisingly-higher 37% (but that’s based on only 17 reviews so it may change later).  One of the few to offer any praise for it (MC 75%) is my local San Francisco Chronicle guru Mick LaSalle who says: “Perhaps what allows Hill to succeed is that he knows the truth of what he's presenting, and that these wild shifts are in harmony with how he sees the world he's depicting. Sometimes the organizing principle behind a work of art needs to be nothing more than the mind of the artist doing the creating. […] ‘Outcome’ is a nice reminder of the kind-spirited quality that Reeves can bring to the screen when he's not murdering hundreds of people in the course of a ‘John Wick’ movie. It's not too late to go back to being a sweet guy.”  More common, though, is David Rooney of the Hollywood Reporter: “Reeves’ introspective humility comes close to poignancy at times, but everyone else is in a different movie — one that would likely never have been made without Hill’s name on the script. […] But since we never get to experience him at his worst, even secondhand, the slow-dawning epiphany rings hollow. [¶] Sadly, there’s no trace here of the authentic fondness for his characters that illuminated Hill’s directing debut, Mid90s. Just a load of solipsistic L.A. brain rot trying to pass for satire.”  Maybe you’ll want to watch this Hollywood-insider movie, maybe not, but at least give some consideration to my Musical Metaphor for what’s on screen here, Brenda Lee’s "I'm Sorry" (on her 1960 Brenda Lee album, a big hit for her when she was a mere 15), where her words of “You tell me mistakes / Are part of being young / But that don’t right / The wrong that’s been done” feel appropriate about Reef’s situation as he has to deal with all of the misery he’s caused others even as his career soared.  This is not a great viewing experience (sorry, Mick), but it does speak to some celebrity-truth as it unfolds.

                    

SHORT TAKES        

                

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:

 

We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts* (scroll to the bottom of this Summary page to see additional info about your wacky critic, Ken Burke, along with contact info and a great retrospective song list).  Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage.  If you’d like to Like us on Facebook (yes?) please visit our Facebook page.  We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it unto us!  Please also note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post.  You can also leave comments at our Facebook page, although you may have to somehow register with us there in order to comment (FB procedures: frequently perplexing mysteries for us aged farts).

 

*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problem’s been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.

 

If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here at the blog please 

use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work.

            

OUR POSTINGS PROBABLY LOOK BEST ON THE MOST CURRENT VERSIONS OF MAC OS AND THE SAFARI WEB BROWSER (although Google Chrome usually is decent also); OTHERWISE, BE FOREWARNED THE LAYOUT MAY SEEM MESSY AT TIMES.

           

Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month the total unique hits at this site were 71,591.  (As always, we thank all of you for your ongoing support with hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers.)  Below is a snapshot of where those responses have come from within the previous week (appreciation for the unspecified “Others” also visiting Two Guys’ site):