When Vivian Brechner (Toni Alexander), a female version of Donald Bren, decides to develop a Casino in the tiny town of Fountain Springs, she must bulldoze their bowling alley which is the, "Only thing we’ve got" scream the fifty-two residents of this California desert backwater.
Brechner's dispatches her son, Alexander, (Tyler Strateman) to do her dirty work, and the town’s mayor, Dawson Dinwitty (Gary Austin) springs into action with the city council, which consists of one man, also the town’s bowling instructor, George Pandick, (Andrew Dickler).
Both men must vote in favor of the new Casino, so Brechner tries to buy Dinwitty’s vote by wining, dining, and cajoling him from her office in Fashion Island and the Big Canyon golf course.
Meanwhile, Alexander gets drunk with the “twin” sons of Fountain Bowl’s owner, Herman Pritzoff (Eric Halsz) and agrees to a bowling contest with a prize of $250,000, enough money for the Pritzoff’s to buy the land and save their bowling alley.
This plot engine runs out of gas quickly because the second act has no real narrative. Instead random characters and events are mixed and matched in a way that makes we wonder if a real movie might have been left on the cutting room floor (or if nothing at all was left on that floor.)
The result is a film filled with a lot of “shtick” that is sometimes funny, but more often tired and jaded. You end up feeling like you watched a very long, Saturday Night Live skit, and that’s probably because writer, producer, director Cherie Kerr is founder of the Orange County Crazies comedy-improvisation troupe.
But I must say that it takes a big set of what’s in the title of this movie to write, direct and produce a feature film, especially if you’ve never done any of those things before. So I take my hat off to Ms. Kerr. Kudos. In the post screening Q and A, Ms. Kerr said there was very little improv, and she followed her own script.
And that is where the problem rests. This story lacks a distinct main character (mayor Dinwitty is the obvious choice) who goes through some kind of learning process, grows, finds his humanity, reaches a low point and in a dramatic, “be or flee” moment, does the right thing and forsakes greed to embrace the love of his friends and constituents after feeling the sting of their moral indignation and the loss he is imposing on them for selfish, egocentric reasons. Instead Dinwitty is just another quirky character, who takes no real action and has no arc.
The second act of this film consists of Tyrone, one of the demolition workers slated to destroy the bowling alley, who shows up to check out the building. He finds Karaoke wanna-be Craig Cramer attempting a Snoop Dog rap. Their friendship is a game changer in the bowling contest because Tyrone and his rapping buddies are bowling ringers. Along the way we meet Craig Cramer's dog, Leonard, Grandma Jean, who home-schools Tink, and also a sexy shoe clerk, Melanie who is the object of Alexander’s, George’s and the twins amorous affection.
Alexander, our proxy villain, comes out and boldly states that he will win Melanie’s love in addition to the bowling contest. And that’s plenty enough of a B story, but it’s lost in all the comic confusion that is not really organic to the plot.
We've Got Balls bills itself as quirky and heartwarming. I can buy quirky. They also call their film a “dark comedy.” That I don’t see anywhere. I see sketch comedy, and a lack of screenplay structure. This is small budget film that produced a pretty big bang for the buck. With all that talent, it’s too bad they picked up a spare when they might have bowled a strike.
