Movies about sports and athletes are almost always fun to watch. There is nothing that can compare to watching people pushing themselves beyond their limits to win. These films are able to span the full range of human emotions. ABC Sports used to say the cover the thrill of the victory to the agony of defeat. Most typically a sports themed flick will be a drama but once in awhile a comedy sneaks its way in. One such film is ‘Ping Pong Playa’ by Jessica Yu. It is based on an unlikely sport, ping pong. Let’s face it; few people gather around their television sets to watch the Olympics to see this sport. Since the wild success of ‘Forrest Gump’ ping pong, otherwise known as table tennis, has gotten an increase in its presence on film. There was the strange little comedy ‘Balls of Fury’ recently but that took the comedy in too broad a direction. This film infuses some family conflict into the mix and ultimately comes across as a gentle, likeable flick. It is admittedly not great but it works well as a family comedy. The film relies on common stereotypes of slackers and losers as well as more than a few cultural slams for good measure. There is nothing hateful or hurtful in the film but as its PG-13 rating indicates the youngest members of your hold may not understand the direction of the humor. The adults will find this movie on the silly aide but there is really nothing wrong with that. After being bombarded by R rated comedies that pander to sex and drugs it is a refreshing change to see a comedy with no other goal than to make you laugh. The movie had a couple of film festival presentations along with a very limited theatrical release. As expected such restrictive marketing made for less than stellar box office. The film can now receive a broader distribution with a DVD and Blu-ray release through Image Entertainment. This is a very good choice for those rainy Saturday afternoons when you want something to watch that your kids haven’t seem a thousand times before.

Providing the screenplay is Jimmy Tsai and Jessica Yu. Tsai stars in this film as protagonist Christopher ‘C-Dub’ Wang. He used this same persona in his previous writing credit the comedy short ‘The Venom Sportswear Ad Campaign’. He has some other credits in production but what are highly unusual in his resume are the years he worked as a production accountant. You don’t often see someone giving up columns of numbers to become a wordsmith. Ms Yu has something you wouldn’t think a writer and director of a silly little comedy would have; an Academy Award. She took home the Oscar in 1997 for Best Documentary, Short Subjects with her film ‘Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien’. Between that film and this one Yu has written three additional documentaries. This may seem like a radical change in career path and indeed it is. It does show that Yu is willing to take some risks to grow in her fields. Her experience in the reality of documentaries gives her a unique viewpoint for a comedy such as this. There is a little feel of a documentary here as the story treats the characters as if they were subjects of some unseen camera. It is a strange juxtaposition of reality and outright silliness that in general works out but does fail to hold together completely. One reason for this may be that the comical mockumentary has already been perfected by Christopher Guest. Yu and Tsai take an alternative direction with more of an ‘Ali-G’ approach. This is not the fine and precise type of humor; it is broad and culls its humor from exaggeration. In order for broad comedy to be effective there has to be a firm foundation in more understandable emotions. This is done nicely here with the plot device of the dissatisfaction of C-Dub with the life that he was born into. He would much rather be a black basketball player than an Asian ping pong star. This is something that we all can relate to in some way or another. Most of us have seen athletes on television and fantasized about how it would be to live that life. The script is loose in places and has a slight tendency to meander but it does work.

As a director Yu has a broader range of experience than with her writing. Aside from directing the documentaries she ahs written Yu has been at the helm of some of the most successful television dramas around. They include ‘ER’, ‘The West Wing’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’. This is her first entry into comedy and she deports her self in fine fashion. The problem with a comedy of this particular format is going too over the top. Yu is able to reign in her cast to bring out what is best described as controlled chaos. She obviously let the actors have a lot of latitude in their performances but they never get out of hand. It also helps that Tasi had already established his character of C-Dub. This gave Yu a core foundation to build the comedy on. Yu is targeting the lucrative tween demographic here. She manages to obscure the curse words with ambient sounds. This is funny the first few times it is employed but gets grating kind of fast. She also used a cute kid, Andrew Vo, to take some of the edge off the roughness of C-Dub. Yu plays the race card repeatedly but with such flair that it seems to work out.

Christopher Wang hates his life. He does everything possible to disassociate himself from his heritage. He was born into an Asian American family that runs a local training school for ping pong players. Christopher rebels against this by renaming himself C-Dub and adopting the stereotypical personal of an urban black teenager. This doesn’t sit well with his family since he is turning his back on their livelihood and culture. For C-Dub the sport he truly wants to play is basketball and he blames a cruel joke of genetics for his inability to succeed. Making matters worse C-Dub is expected to live up to the extremely high expectations set by his older brother Michael (Roger Fan). After making a name for himself as a ping pong champion he went on to become a doctor. C-Dub is pulled back into the reality of being Christopher when Michael and their mother are in an accident. The father forces Christopher to take on teaching his mother’s ping pong classes. It turns out that Christopher starts to like teaching ping pong; something that is helped by the beautiful sister on one of his young students.

This film is good fun and will get the family laughing together. Image has one of the most varied catalogue around and this is an example of the quirky titles they offer on DVD and Blu-ray.