No doubt most of us have a dodgeball memory, since it wasn't until after my generation that the touchy-feely weenies took over physical education in schools. The ultimate Darwin game,you were either the weak one getting pelted or the bully getting a kick out of throwing a red rubber ball at someone as hard as possible. I was/am very competitive in all aspects, especially athletically, so you can imagine that I enjoyed the game very much, the dodging probably even more than the throwing.

	So, um, I've always had this Marcia Brady fantasy ...

Let's hop in the Way Back machine to Scenic Hill Elementary, back home in Memphis, where we'd play dodgeball during recess in the pavilion out back. When you were eliminated, we'd grab a spare ball and play four-square, basketball on the other end, listen attentively to Jason talk about attending the Beastie Boys concert or find out who was going to kiss whom behind the back wall.

All that being said, I laughed hysterically throughout Dodgeball. There's plenty of lowbrow humor, appealing to the lowest common denominator of human comedy. Peppered with hot female bods there are gay jokes, multitudes of ball jokes, and well-placed cameos by Chuck Norris and David Hasselhoff, although William Shatner's role was worthless.

Dodgeball is, as expected, a violent film, full of whacks and thumps. The dodgeball hits people so hard, you'd think it was full of marbles. I don't know why the violence would upset some reviewers, since this is a lot tamer physical comedy than many flicks nowadays, and there isn't any gross-out humor that turns me off.

Vince Vaughn is money, baby. He's swinging. Vaughn runs Average Joe's across the street. He's a couch potato who can't pay his bills, since none of his customers actually pay their dues. The assorted no-talent losers make up all the key morons needed in an underdog flick. You've got your high school nerd, middle-age reject, guy who thinks he's a pirate, a clueless geek and an Arab blowhard.

Ben Stiller makes his mark with feathery hair and a 'stache right out of 70s porn (not that I would know). He never has the right words, being that he's an idiot who insults people with inane phrases like "cram it up your cram hole." But even though Stiller is crazy and dumb, he is an adversary since he's filthy rich as the founder of Globo Gym ("We're better than you and we know it"), going from a slovenly fatty to a radical health nut who punishes himself for thinking about donuts. Out of spite for Vaughn's ragtag bunch of 90-pound weaklings, Stiller shows up with a team that would make American Gladiators cry to their mommies.

Good for the losers that Christine Taylor shows up, first as a lawyer ready to kick them out and then as a teammate. She may or may not be a lesbian, but she's got a rocket for a right arm. She's Stiller's wife in real life, so you can tell they had fun when she spurns his obscene advances violently. Taylor isn't just eye candy this time around, as she is with so many other roles since The Brady Bunch Movie, she has her own fetish worth a giggle.

Rip Torn shows up just when the team needs him as Patches O'Houlihan, a dodgeball legend now looking like a stereotypical Vietnam Vet in a wheelchair with long hair and a tattered jacket covered in patches, even though they're all from dodgeball tournaments. The movie really kicks into gear when Torn gets the team into shape during the requisite training montage, an extremely funny sequence of pain as the guys duck and dodge tools and cars with their crotches and faces.

The basic plot is right out of the Obscure Sports Quarterly. The dodgeball world championship is coming up in Las Vegas with $50,000 to the winners, which as it turns out, happens to be exactly how much Vaughn needs to save his gym. Along the way to the finals against Globo Gym (duh, you knew it was coming), Average Joe's takes on lumberjacks, Japanese in diapers and any and every other stereotype that fits.

A la BASEketball a few years back with Bob Costas announcing, and Bob Uecker in Major League, Dodgeball makes good use of the announcers for the tournament, working for ESPN8, "The Ocho." Gary Cole fills the air with plenty of "that's gotta hurt," and Jason Bateman is every color announcer who ever annoyed you as Captain Obvious, telling the audience what they already knew.

Thankfully I'm not mature enough to look down on such fun, and being still in my 20s feel no shame whatsoever!

Quite simply, it's the funniest. Dodgeball movie. Ever. Do you believe in unlikelyhoods? I do now. Thank you, Chuck Norris.