8. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
From the subtitle practically giving the game away to the finale featuring a treasure chest labelled 'deus ex machina', fewer films have shrugged off an impossibly happy ending with as much fun as Dodgeball. Peter LaFleur's (Vince Vaughan) ragtag bunch of no-hopers have defeated their physically superior rivals Globo-Gym, led by White Goodman (Ben Stiller), in the Las Vegas Dodgeball tournament final. But it's Goodman who seems to have the last laugh, for he had previously persuaded LaFleur to part with his Average Joes gym for $100,000. That is, until a series of last-minute loopholes and complications see LaFleur back on top. Yes, it's one plot contrivance after another, but deliberately so; with everything resolved (including all possible romantic threads tied up in a pretty bow) so that The Good Guys Win. But what happened to White Goodman? The short answer: he got fat. The longer answer: the pain of defeat, coupled with the humiliation of being sacked by LaFleur, has sent him back to his crutch of comfort eating. As the credits rise, we find that he has become grotesquely obese and unable to put the past behind him. Surrounded by a mountain of junk food, he tucks into a bucket of fried chicken while complaining- to us, it would appear- that the film's clichéd resolution is a symptom of '' American cinema's complexity''. ''Don't make me think, I just wanna be entertained'' he jeers, leaving the audience to either look down in shame or wonder whether the film is simply having its cake (and chocolate and chicken and chips) and eating it. To prove his point, he suddenly springs into a half-hearted (but full-fat frightening) rendition of Kelis' 'Milkshake'. If that's still too much of an, erm, Hollywood ending for you, then check out the alternative version on the DVD...