Balls Up (2026)
Directed by: Peter Farrelly
Premise: A product designer and a salesman (Paul Walter Hauser and Mark Wahlberg) attend a World Cup game in Brazil. They inadvertently cause the home team to lose and must run for their lives.
What Works: Balls Up was directed by Peter Farrelly who previously helmed Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary and it was written by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese whose better projects include Deadpool and Zombieland. (They also wrote some execrable action comedies like Ghosted and 6 Underground.) Balls Up generally reflects Farrelly, Wernick, and Reese’s strengths, especially the film’s lewd anarchy. Two Americans have outraged Brazil’s soccer fans (meaning everyone) and go on the run, causing chaos wherever they go. These men are former employees of a condom manufacturing company that invented a new prophylactic. Their product keeps coming up throughout the movie in fairly inventive ways. It’s the kind of running joke that becomes funnier by absurd repetition. The bulk of Balls Up consists of a series of wacky misadventures. One of the best sequences is set at the home of a drug dealer played by Sacha Baron Cohen. The filmmakers and the cast are willing to do some outrageous things and the movie manages a few surprises.
What Doesn’t: The episodic nature of Balls Up is both an asset and a liability. Caddyshack and The Blues Brothers did episodic comedy successfully because the pieces fit together as part of a whole. The parts of Balls Up are disconnected from one another. The colorful supporting characters we meet along the way rarely come back into the story. These Americans are on the run but the storytelling doesn’t have a sense of direction. The characters don’t know where they are going and the film feels aimless. It doesn’t arrive at a conclusion so much as it just stops.Balls Up is inconsistently funny. When the jokes land, they really work but plenty of them don’t. Mark Wahlberg and Paul Walter Hauser play an odd couple. They have contrasting physiques and demeanors but the use of the characters is uninspired. Their different interests and temperaments rarely come into play. Moreover, the film doesn’t have any fun at their expense. Everyone is wrong or ridiculous except Wahlberg and Hauser. Two Americans causing chaos throughout South America has subversive potential but the moviemakers do not seem cognizant of that and they don’t do anything interesting with it. Mark Wahlberg is miscast. Whenever he does overt comedy, Wahlberg comes across self-conscious and he tries too hard to be funny.
Disc extras: Available on Amazon Prime Video.
Bottom Line: Balls Up is a mediocre comedy. It is just outrageous and funny enough to merit a watch but Balls Up is also forgettable and haphazard.
Episode: #1096 (April 26, 2026)