This film is a loose parody of Enter the Dragon, where a former ping-pong champ (Dan Fogler) is recurited by an FBI agent (George Lopez) to participate in a tournament held by a gun runner (Christopher Walken) in hopes of finding his stash. After being trained by an old master (James Hong) and his hot niece (Maggie Q), the gang heads to the tournament, and hilarity ensues.

Or at least that's the general idea. Balls of Fury was written and directed by Thomas Ian Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, better known as Dangle and Junior from the TV show Reno 911. Like that show, the humor is hit-or-miss. The stuff that works (such as James Hong dispensing awful pearls of wisdom) is really funny, but a good number of jokes just fall flat -- do we really need any more Matrix parodies? Come on, guys. It's 2007 -- give it up.

At any rate, the film fires so many jokes at the viewer that it keeps the chuckle factor high enough to keep their interest. And just in case that doesn't work, the film-makers also threw in some nice eye candy, most notably Maggie Q. Sure, this is yet another token "hot Asian chick" role for her, but at least she's on-screen for more than two minutes. But she's really going to have to try and find projects and roles of more substance if she hopes to really break through in the US, or else it's back to working on Wong Jing productions for her.

Balls of Fury isn't Shakespeare. Hell, it isn't even up to the level of great dopey comedies like Dumb and Dumber. But it is a fairly entertaining way to kill ninety minutes. That might be faint praise, but considering the woeful nature of most of Hollywood's output these days, some praise is better than none.

RATING: 6