Summary: <p>It’s the story of a young man destined for glory, but not by the standards of those around him. C-Dub (Jimmy Tsai) plays by his own rules and rolls to the beat of his own hip-hop drum, but can he clear his name and save the family business?</p> <p>Ping Pong Playa starts off with the standard setup. Loser brother screws up and hurts the Golden Boy brother (Roger Fan), putting the family business in jeopardy. C-Dub now must take on the role of coach to a rag-tag group of kids which C-Dub even calls out saying “I ain’t trying to coach no bad news bears.” Among them is F-bomb (Andrew Vo), the boy that wants to be just like C-Dub. Free Willy (Kevin Chung) is a larger kid that eventually loses 15 pounds due to the training from C-Dub. </p> <p>Then there’s Prabakar (Javin Reid), the genius with an amazing grasp on how things should be mathematically, but physically is slower than a sloth in molasses. What should have been a few laughable moments with Prabakar ended up feeling overly awkward and a bit painful as he tried explaining the physics of how he was supposed to play and physically couldn’t have hit the ball if it was already stuck to his paddle. </p> <p><img src="https://media.giphy.com/media/UcPk8CwuboPBe/giphy.gif" width="458" height="364" alt="Not featured: Prabakar doing anything well on the table" class="aligncenter"></p> <p>We haven’t even discussed the antagonist, Gerald Harcourt (Peter Paige), the British (?) American that wears high shorts, has terrible form, and is an overall gross character. While C-Dub is coaching the kids (by taking their allowance and gambling against other competitors) Harcourt decides he’s seen enough and wants to open his own gym and tries to steal the kids away from the Ping Pong Palace. The thing that is idiotic about this is that Harcourt has been practicing at the Ping Pong Palace for what seems like no money at all and is now going to open his own gym? Yeah, doesn’t quite hold water. It was hard to hate this antagonist because his ping pong skills were garbage. </p> <div style="width: 310px;" class="wp-caption aligncenter"> <img src="https://media.giphy.com/media/KUztrrqScXPt6/giphy.gif" width="300" height="169" alt="Two robots play ping pong while their creators look on" class><p class="wp-caption-text">These robots have more skill and personality than Gerald Harcourt</p> </div> <p>That reminds me, ping pong action gets a fat 0/5 from me. C-Dub has clearly played in real life, but everyone else looks like it’s their first time at the table. Harcourt puffs his chest out whenever he hits the ball and I found myself grinding my teeth in disgust.</p> <p>One of the better pieces of the movie is the best friend, JP Money, who has been taking Chinese for three years and is still getting a handle on the language. The friendship is genuine and the two friends support each other in their endeavors. This was a good pairing and JP Money’s minibike was dope. </p> <p>The ending was a decent payoff, but I’ll let you get to that yourself, if you can make it that far. I’ve definitely seen worse (Geoff says he has not), but Balls of Fury stacks up better, and is more fun, than this Jessica Yu-directed table tennis flick. The only thing Ping Pong Playa has over Balls of Fury is that they are actually playing ping pong (except a few times toward the end). </p> <p><img src="https://media.giphy.com/media/pJb56CsD4FTkQ/giphy.gif" width="320" height="180" alt="Ping Pong Playa was not as fun as this. " class="aligncenter"></p> <p>John’s Overall: 2/5<br> Geoff’s Overall: 1/5 – “Worse than Play it to the Bone”<br> Ping Pong Action: 0/5</p>
