Balls of Fury
Randy Daytona (Dan Fogler) was a child table-tennis prodigy until an embarrassing semifinal knockout forced him into ping-pong obscurity, doing parlour tricks in small pubs. Here an FBI agent (George Lopez) recruits Randy for a top-secret mission to sniff out Feng (Christopher Walken), a table-tennis wizard who is responsible for the death of Randy’s father. It’s a farcical sports comedy in the vein of Dodgeball or Nacho Libre, where most of the humour is vested in outrageous character quirks and the far-out nature of the premise. Except in this case the only quirky performance worth a mention comes (not surprisingly) from Walken. The rest of the plot consists of tasteless jabs at Chinese culture, blind people and homosexuals. — Warren Foster
Big Fellas
Big Fellas is a hideous attempt at easing the tension caused by BEE in South Africa. The ‘comedy” tries to capture what life is really like in the new South Africa through the life of wannabe producers Jake (Colin Moss) and Zed (Ross Garland). The two desperately need a BEE partner in order to clinch a film deal for a documentary exposé about the modelling industry. Jack and Zed undertake a road trip from Cape Town to Durban, with only two days to find a partner. Along the way they get into trouble with the law and encounter, among others, a white man with a black man’s accent. The intent of the film is reasonable, but it ends up being cheesy and weak. — Surika van Schalkwyk
Captivity
A queasy and mostly nauseating piece of torture-porn. Model-actress-whatever Jennifer (Elisha Cuthbert) orders an apple martini at a Manhattan club, feels a bit woozy and wakes up tied down in a dungeon in which unspeakable things have been lined up for her by some wacko. But the wacko has also imprisoned Gary (Daniel Gillies) and, well, boy meets girl and the old chemistry starts a-fizzin’. It could have been the basis for a bizarre black comedy, were it not for the chillingly misjudged seriousness of everything on offer. It asks us to believe that Jennifer would want to have sex under these conditions and that she would still look like a total hottie after being tortured. Every cinema showing this should have little bottles of Listerine on sale to get rid of the dodgy taste. — Peter Bradshaw