You’ve been served on a very minimum level
Christopher ‘C-Dub’ Wang is a baller. He has dreams of the NBA and aspires to be great, in some way. While slacking off and not doing what he should be, he inadvertently causes his prized ping pong playing brother and mother to get in a car wreck. C-Dub’s dreams of hooping it with Kobe get put on hold and replaced with teaching his mother’s Ping Pong class at the local community center. On top of this, because of the injury to his brother, he must also help the family business out by winning the local Ping Pong tournament.
Always the positive before the negative…
The acting, especially from the kids, is pretty good. You can tell everyone had some fun with this movie and it shows onscreen. Jimmy Tsai is entertaining to watch, he’s witty at times and sometimes even hilarious (sometimes). His approach to the role as a ‘serious baller’ never strays from the path the character is written on. Again, very impressive.
The movie itself is so much better than Balls of Fury which doesn’t pay any respect to the game of Ping Pong. Ping Pong Playa actually pays some respect and gives some history regarding the true origin of the game. Even though it’s mostly comedy, you can see the Chinese pride through the dialogue. It’s fun to watch and ultimately makes me want to learn how to speak Chinese.
Now for the negative. The story is extremely shallow, relying more on comedy then deep direction. I do understand that this is a ‘comedy’, but you can still have a deep story written as the base for the comedic moments. It’s possible, because in the last few years other films have done this (Tropic Thunder, CJ7, etc.) and come away looking remarkably good. This just seems too straight forward, quickly put together and doesn’t go further than the comedy itself in terms of depth. I wish it had, because the actors and actresses really deserve that. I think the next time around it could be even better, hopefully Tsai will be involved with a possible sequel (and bring everyone back — including the director).
Ping Pong into the Blu
The HD is noticeable on the Blu-ray, but whatever the film was actually shot on looks drab in most areas. Of course, that could just be the environment, but there’s not a lot of color in it. It still looks better than DVD, but not by leaps and bounds. The sweetness of the Blu-ray comes through the audio. The film has a fantastic soundtrack and the audio of the ping pong is good. I’m happy with that part of the Blu-ray.
As for the features, here’s what you get:
– Commentary from Jessica Yu and Jimmy Tsai
– Two Featurettes “Warm-Up Drills” and “Post-Game”
– Trailer
It’s certainly not packed with a lot of features, but what you get is average rated features. They’re okay, but nothing spectacular. I wish there were a few more, a little more in-depth about the filmmaking process. Funny stuff occasionally.