Balls Up – Review

Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 47 minutes, Director – Peter Farrelly

Brad (Mark Wahlberg) and Elijah (Paul Walter Hauser) secure and then lose a major World Cup sponsorship deal for a condom company. Things go from bad to worse when they fall in with a drug gang after causing the host country to lose the final.

After winning the Best Picture Oscar for The King’s Speech Tom Hooper moved on to tackle Les Miserables even before Cats. Yet, Cats still makes some sense as a major film to tackle after winning one of the biggest prizes the film industry has to offer. Whatever you may think about Green Book, it, too, managed to secure Best Picture, and director Peter Farrelly’s career appears to have been going back towards the comedies that he started out making with brother Bobby. While The Greatest Beer Run Ever and Ricky Stanicky gained generally admirable receptions his latest streaming feature; Balls Up, which finds itself landing quietly on Amazon Prime, will undoubtedly be one of the worst films of the year.

Star Mark Wahlberg has turned against Boogie Nights more and more over the years, talking about his regret over taking on the role of porn star Dirk Diggler due to his faith, and family. Faith and family, however, don’t get in the way of him playing out a scene where his character forces a condom, with additional pouch for testicles, stuffed with cocaine down his throat. The scene in which this happens isn’t a short one, either. It’s one of many extended moments that feel around ten minutes too long as things go from bad to worse for two former condom marketing employees.

Wahlberg’s Brad and Paul Walter Hauser’s Elijah are fired after securing and losing a deal for their brand of condoms to sponsor the Brazilian World Cup. Yet, tickets turn up for the final and when getting drunk during the game one runs into the pitch and accidentally loses the game for the host country, causing the population to turn against the pair. From there they run in with a drug gang led by Sacha Baron Cohen (whose performance is largely ‘he’s doing a voice’) and have to try and escape every overlong situation they find themselves in. Each drawn out in both the edit and Zombieland and Deadpool duo Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick’s screenplay; as if trying to bleed the driest of stones of any humour before giving up and having to scramble to move on to the next skit.

For just under two hours I sat bearing through multiple jokes about condoms or drugs, or both, as the film’s humour opens with Wahlberg showing anatomical diagrams of a penis and vagina to a group of executives as part of a pitch meeting. At no point did I come close to laughing during what becomes an increasingly monotonous attempt at crude humour. One that can’t really be labelled as gross-out or any other kind of comedy sub-genre, maybe farce could fit the film but the frantic, layered events you would expect from this are certainly not present here. Instead, crude appears to be the main focus, and it doesn’t take off much beyond that, aside from forcing its attempted jokes on you, as if shouting not to compensate for the lack of laughs but as if part of the joke is shouting.

Dullness and frustration combine for a truly enjoyable experience. One which makes Green Book (which I liked) seem delicately subtle in its approach. One can only assume that in a few years time Wahlberg will also come out to express regret over this role too, and this time not just because of his family and faith.

A dismal near two hours of laugh-free gags that feels that crude shouting is enough to see through multiple unfunny situations, all of which are forced on too long. This is a balls up far beyond just name.