Christopher Walken plays a pingpong-obsessed crime lord. Photo by Gemma La Mana

You can watch Balls of Fury two different ways. Option #1: Embrace the idiocy and utter stupidity it offers, laugh at it and have a reasonably good time. Option #2: Detest every second of the aforementioned idiocy and utter stupidity and find no redeeming value in it whatsoever. Scoff about the groin kicks, pratfalls and gay jokes as you leave the theater. Vow to never see a dumb comedy like this again.

Hopefully, if you’re paying money to see Balls of Fury you’ve already chosen the first option, which offers some hearty gut-busters worth embracing, just not enough of them. The premise is freely stolen from Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon (1973), but it’s neither a respectful homage nor a fitting tribute to the martial arts legend. Instead, it’s an irreverent tale about a former pingpong prodigy named Randy Daytona (Dan Fogler) who’s recruited by an FBI agent (George Lopez) to expose the evildoings of Feng (Christopher Walken), the Chinese Mafioso who killed Randy’s father (Robert Patrick).

Randy is portly, obsessed with Def Leppard and proudly sports Van Buren sideburns with long shaggy hair. He’s grossly out of shape and out of practice, so he’s sent to train with Master Wong (James Hong) and his niece, Maggie (Maggie Q). He has two weeks to get good enough to participate in Feng’s exclusive pingpong tournament, where he can gather evidence of Feng’s criminal activity.

Everything about the movie is silly, from Randy anally transporting communication devices to Feng’s garish costumes, which come in red, purple and black. Hong gets great mileage out of playing the blind old sage Master Wong and never misses a chance to make a joke about prostitutes or use a time-honored gag, such as saying “uncle can take care of himself” as he walks into a fence.

Although you’re not supposed to take any of it seriously, cowriter/director Ben Garant (Reno 911) has his actors play the comedy straight, as the better movies in this vein (Airplane, The Naked Gun) have successfully done. The rationale is simple: If the actors know they’re in a comedy and laugh at themselves, the viewer sees a bunch of idiots amusing themselves. But if they play it seriously, then the comedy rises out of the situation and the viewer laughs at the absurdity of it all.

That is, as long as it’s funny. Once the tournament begins, the script, by Garant and Thomas Lennon (who also appears as an arrogant German pingponger), loses its ambition; there aren’t as many jokes in the movie’s second half. Perhaps this is because it features Walken doing yet another eccentric but not all that hilarious take on his crazy-man screen persona. But the more likely reason is that the story kicks into gear and what’s happening starts to mean something to Randy, which makes us care about the man when all we want to do is laugh at him.

So yes, Balls of Fury is sophomoric, immature and lowbrow. But the only complaint you’ll have is that it’s not as funny as it could have been.

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Balls of Fury ** Directed by Ben Garant. Written by Garant and Thomas Lennon. Starring Dan Fogler, Christopher Walken, James Hong, George Lopez, Maggie Q. Rated PG-13.   **** A genuine must-see ***  Entertaining **   Mediocre but not worthless *    A wretched waste of time   Also opening in Miami-Dade County this Friday: Death Sentence, The 11th Hour, Halloween, Interview, Ladron que roba a ladron, Two Days in Paris