Catch ‘Dodgeball’

You’d think a comedy with a plot that involves grown men repeatedly getting hammered in sensitive areas of the anatomy by various projectiles would eventually run out of steam. It turns out that “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Tale” has more going for it than one might expect.

Taking the ubiquitous elementary school sport that either inspires wistful nostalgia or years of psychotherapy, “Dodgeball” actually finds ways to keep the audience engaged. Peter LeFleur (Vince Vaughn) is the aimless owner of Average’s Joe’s Gymnasium who’s laissez faire attitude toward life has led his business into foreclosure. Across the street, Globo Gym owner White Goodman (Ben Stiller), a former couch potato who has reinvented himself as a buff, narcissistic fitness guru, covets LeFleur’s property.

LeFleur is visited by lawyer Kate Veatch (Christine Taylor), who informs him he has 30 days to come up with $50,000 if he doesn’t want to lose the business, or it will be demolished to make way for Globo Gym’s new auxiliary parking garage.

When LeFleur breaks the news to the assorted misfits that hang out at the gym, they begin brainstorming ways to come up with the cash. Anger-repressing Gordon (Stephen Root), an avid reader of “Obscure Sports Magazine,” advances the idea that the group compete in the national dodgeball championship, which has a $50,000 grand prize. But Goodman gets wind of the plan and he assembles his own dream team of athletic specimens to challenge the Average Joe’s crew.

It takes its time getting up to speed, but once the first ball is hurled the constant onslaught of lowbrow humor and physical comedy are enough to blow out a lung from laughing so hard. Reminiscent of other sports comedies such as “BASEketball” and “The Bad News Bears,” it relies on some very un-PC jokes, but its jabs at the clichés of “serious” sports movies — and of sports culture itself — are well aimed.

It helps that the cast includes recruits from some recent cult comedies, from “Office Space’s” Stephen Root and Gary Cole, to Justin Long from the defunct NBC comedy “Ed” and Jason Bateman from Fox’s “Arrested Development.” Ben Stiller gets to play a new variation on his normally neurotic screen personas, so thoroughly sleazy and vile that his real life wife Christine Taylor looks like she may have really had to throw up. It’s Vince Vaughn, however, who gets some of the best laughs as the deadpan straight man to Stiller’s egomaniacal twit. Then there’s Rip Torn’s performance, which has to be seen to be believed.

“Dodgeball” suffers from a slow opening and almost loses credibility in the last 10 minutes, but it’s a notable first outing for director and writer Rawson Thurber. From the audience’s reaction it’s likely that “Dodgeball” will have a rich life in the DVD market. It’s the kind of movie you’d see again because you missed so many funny moments between the ones that caused you to exhale your soda pop through your nose.