Balls of Fury is the latest and least of the quasi-sport sports movies. Its cast is a who’s who of comedians the crazy kids like—you’ll spend much of your time whispering to your friends, “hey, isn’t that --?” And yes, I can confirm for you now: That is the guy from Office Space and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (Diedrech Bader). Yes, that’s the T-1000 (Robert Patrick). Yes, that is the ubiquitous Patton Oswalt. Yes, that is the guy who played Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). Yes, that is the sportscaster from Anchorman (David Koechner). And, finally, yes, that is the Reno 911 guy (Thomas Lennon), and one of the writers of the film.

The plot of Balls of Fury is more a throughline on which to hang jokes than a progression of events, but here we go anyway: Mysterious Triad leader Mister Feng (Christopher Walken, and a great first reveal of Feng’s identity has been ruined by putting his face all over the ad campaign) holds an annual ping pong tournament in which all competitors must either win or die. The FBI wants to bust Feng, so they recruit ping pong has-been Randy Daytona (Dan Fogler) to infiltrate the tournament and bust Feng. FYI: “ping pong has-been” looks terrible on your résumé.

There’s the tournament, and the sidekick FBI agent (George Lopez), and the old arch rival (Lennon), and the abrasive love interest (Maggie Q, recently of Live Free or Die Hard), and don’t forget the wise old blind Chinese mentor (James Hong, providing helpful tips like “Remember: You suck when you’re nervous"). Do I need to mention that Feng is responsible for the death of Daytona’s father, and now Daytona wants revenge? I thought not.

It’s funny, more or less, but not in any surprising or particularly engaging way. The best lines come from Lennon’s over-sharing German and, of course, Walken’s Mister Feng. Feng is fabulous, by which I mean gay, and the unexpected ways this manifests generate the biggest laughs. I won’t spoil any of the gags, because I don’t need to. You’ve seen them in the trailers, and most have no more depth than what can be contained in a 2-minute ad. It’s all gag setup, gag execution, reaction shot, cut to new scene. The talent involved elevates the material, but there’s really only so far they can take it.

A great comedy based on genre clichés would take the chance to explore what makes those clichés work and subvert them; look at Beerfest. A merely good one will build and sustain jokes on the sturdy frame of genre clichés, creating larger and larger laughs (BASEketball). A merely adequate comedy sets up endless gags with little to no relation to each other; the result resembles a sketch comedy show with a little too much self-esteem.

Balls of Fury isn’t quite the latter, but its downtime-to-laugh ratio would be greatly improved by quartering its run time. It would also be improved by better production value. It’s true that the characters and situations are absurd and presumably “beneath” the audience, but the shabbiness surrounding them seems less appropriate to this tone and more like the whole thing was written and filmed over a couple weeks. It’s hard to care too much when everything is so clearly half-assed. There are laughs, but so few genuine ones that they hardly matter.

A curious thing happens when you write a review: Sometimes you find out you liked a movie a lot less than you realized, and sometimes (though not as often) the reverse is true. Dear Reader, when I wrote the first sentence, Balls of Fury hovered around the 3-star mark. But now I find myself with a curious mix of annoyance and disappointment. Annoyance, because only now am I realizing the time I wasted last night. Disappointment, because Lennon and director and co-writer Ben Garant (also of Reno 911 fame) have done so much better on a weekly basis for years now. One wonders why they bothered.