It’s been a long time since that incredible run of R-rated slapstick comedies from Peter and Bobby Farrelly—including “Dumb and Dumber,” “Kingpin,” “There’s Something About Mary,” and even misfired but ambitious attempts to surprise audiences, like “Me, Myself and Irene” and “Shallow Hal.” Maybe the problem is that the brothers aren’t working together anymore. Or maybe it’s that Peter isn’t originating most of the newer material. Aside from the unexpected box office and awards success of his uncharacteristically preachy and condescending race relations drama “Green Book“—aka “Driving Crash Daisy,” which beat out “BlacKKKlansman” and “Black Panther” for Best Picture—Farrelly hasn’t been a cultural force in a while.
“Balls Up” isn’t going to change that. Directed by Farrelly from a script by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (who wrote “Deadpool” and “Zombieland,” both of which were a lot more amusing than this) it’s about two guys at a marketing firm, the relentlessly enthusiastic salesman Brad (Mark Wahlberg) and the mercurial designer Elijah (Paul Walter Hauser), who try to get Brazil’s Travel Ministry to get Elijah’s recent invention, a condom that can cover the beans as well as the frank, the official prophylactic of the 2025 World Cup. Elijah christened it The Testicle Sentinel, which sounds like a science fiction short story that Arthur C. Clarke might’ve published in Playboy. The travel ministry boss that Elijah and Brad have to please in order to close the deal, Santos (Benjamin Bratt), worries that the name is too “clinical…not too sexy.” Elijah counter-proposes Balls Up, after what the condom does when applied. Mission accomplished.
But the scheme that kickstarts the movie has nothing to do with sponsorship deals or contraceptive devices: at the World Cup, which pits Brazil against Argentina, Elijah gets into an altercation with the Balls Up mascot and punches it in the area where a condom is typically deployed. Like any other comedy bit bearing the Farrelly name, this one is not highbrow, nor does it pretend to be. It sets up the main story, so it’s functional, and it’s funny. So is domino chain of gags that follows. Savor the laughs, though, because there aren’t too many more where those came from.
The bulk of “Balls Up” follows Elijah and Brad, who have ruined the match, as they try to escape Brazil without being murdered by distraught fans. It’s as tedious as it sounds, on top of making Brazil seem as dangerous as that area of Mogadishu where the U.S. Marines in “Black Hawk Down” got slaughtered by furious locals. Wahlberg should not be cast in any role predicated on the idea that he’s good with words and ideas. Hauser is one of the best actors in the English language and will escape this disaster and do more great work, so there’s that.
