Lady Ballers (2023)
Anatomy Lesson
“It’s not enough to know which notes to play. You’ve gotta know why they need to be played!”
—George Carlin
The biggest problem with Lady Ballers isn’t its politics; it’s that the filmmakers have problems making comedy. In recent interviews, co-writer/director/producer/star Jeremy Boreing has said that he and his Daily Wire crew wanted to emulate mid-2000s raunch fests with their story of a down-and-out basketball coach named Rob, who enlists five men to compete as women in the Global Games. In an era of roiling cultural tides, where transgender women continue racking up medals in female sports categories, and the high water mark of big-screen social satire is the Barbie movie, this is the perfect time for a biting, laser-focused look at the socio-sexual landscape. Sadly, when it comes to insight, wit, and belly laughs, Lady Ballers is more Scary Movie 5 than Scary Movie.
Great comedies mix well-told jokes with well-constructed narratives whose themes and characters resonate beyond sight gags or pop references. Though competently executed on a modest budget, Lady Ballers would need several more drafts to be even half as funny as Dodgeball.
Of course, no one anointed me the King of Comedy,* but I have come up with three big reasons why Boreing’s movie misses the mark:
Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster Speaking of Dodgeball, the 2004 Vince Vaughn/Ben Stiller vehicle is one of several hit comedies from which Boreing and co-writers Brian A. Hoffman and Nick Sheehan steal liberally. Someone should have told them that “throwing back” to a style of filmmaking doesn’t simply mean copying it bit for bit:
Daily Wire personalities Brett Cooper and Michael Knowles play clueless news commentators in the vein of Dodgeball’s Gary Cole and Jason Bateman (or Fred Willard’s characters in just about any Christopher Guest movie from the 2000s).
Tyler Fischer plays Felix, the put-upon towel boy who grows up to be an awkward tech billionaire with an unresolved need to be loved by the cool kids—much like Thomas Lennon’s character in 17 Again.
Like Wayne’s World, the film stops abruptly to poke fun at product placement (the main difference is that Paramount Pictures wasn’t shilling its own products in that film; Lady Ballers includes an actual commercial for Jeremy’s Razors—Boreing’s real-life, marketplace response to the 2019 Gillette controversy).
And while I appreciate the commitment of Boreing and his cast in subjecting themselves to plenty of debasement and over-the-top physical comedy, the experience of watching all the sweaty, slow-mo basketball court indignities (Along Came Polly); taser humor (The Hangover); and men-secretly-attracted-to-men-dressed-as-women (White Chicks) made me want to revisit a handful of old movies—not suffer through the tribute band version of them.
At just under 2 hours long, Lady Ballers spends way too much time in “greatest hits” mode, and not enough effort developing unique situations for its large cast (aside from two teammates who A) share a mother, B) have different fathers, and C) who were…ahem…conceived at the same time).
The “getting the team back together” scene should have been a montage, but instead eats up about fifteen momentum-sucking minutes. On top of that, we already know Coach Rob is keeping the whole playing-as-women plan a secret in order to get his guys to sign on—meaning there’s at least another ten minutes of “business” to endure before the movie really kicks in.
A deft hand could condense the first 55 minutes of Lady Ballers into 25, teeing up the the sports action for minute 26, instead of, as it does, minute 56.
Preaching to the Wire The Daily Wire advertises Lady Ballers as “the most triggering comedy of the year”, but it’s hard to offend an audience that won’t watch your movie. Like their 2022 documentary, What Is a Woman?, the outlet is offering Lady Ballers as an exclusive to their “Plus” service subscribers. No public streaming, digital rentals, or physical media. Jeremy Boreing’s feature debut is stuck behind a paywall that few on the Progressive Left will be chomping at the bit to access.
When asked about this recently, Boreing said this “preaching to the choir” strategy is intentional: get the choir on board and they’ll evangelize to friends, family, and even those who might be skeptical of a comedy featuring the likes of Walsh and fellow Conservative firebrand Ben Shapiro.
It’s an interesting idea, but the experiment would need a better comedy than Lady Ballers in order to prove anything. The idea that a Liberal or a politically agnostic/ignorant “normie” might plop down fifteen bucks a month for the laugh-out-loud hijinks promised by their right-of-center acquaintance is…ambitious, to say the least.
Will non-culture war combatants pick up on the Jeffrey Epstein bit? Will they feel the (alleged) comedic impact of a character being asked, “What Is a Woman?” Will they even recognize senator Ted Cruz in his snooze-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo—or the similarly puzzling, dialogue-free appearance by Jordan Peterson in the morally conflicted mid-credits scene?
Aside from an inspired gag in which an eight-year-old girl relays her school’s complicated gender-spectrum lesson on a whiteboard as if it were a basketball playbook, the jokes in Lady Ballers aren’t so much “jokes” as the Right Wing equivalent of clapter.**
The bright, shining exception is the character Kris, ironically played by Matt Walsh with an airy, “love is beautiful” demeanor and New Century Hippie garb. He’s a spot-on update of Beavis and Butt-head’s Mr. Van Driessen. Knowing just how contrary this is to Walsh’s real-life persona (or at least his Daily Wire persona) is a bonus, an Easter Egg; it’s not essential to the enjoyment of his effortless and, frankly, hilarious turn. Of course, this is undone in a frustrating third act reveal that, despite being presented as a brilliant “Gotcha!” by Boreing and company, left me rewinding the figurative tape to understand the point.
On balance, Lady Ballers isn’t half as funny or thought-provoking as the daily “cancellations” on Walsh’s eponymous Daily Wire show—or even the running gag on The Michael Knowles Show, in which the host is interrupted by a music interlude whenever he tries discussing transgender news items on YouTube. It’s a shame Boreing didn’t insist on taking those writers off the bench for his proverbial Big Game.
Ideological “Dis”-phoria I opened by saying that Lady Ballers’ politics is not its biggest problem. To some, that may imply that I align with the film’s messaging about transgenderism. I’m not sure what that messaging is, exactly, so it’s hard to say either way.
The movie is confused on a number of points, but two really stand out. Starting with the lowest-hanging fruit, the filmmakers really have it in for journalists. From the airhead newscasters who become progressively (pun intended) more pathetic in their quest to not get canceled; to the unscrupulous Gwen Wilde (Billie Rae Brandt), a reporter who puppeteers Coach Rob’s new career in the hopes of cynically cashing in on the trans-athlete crazy—you won’t find an ounce of integrity in any of the media-figure characters.
Last I checked, The Daily Wire is a news outlet. Journalists tend to work for news outlets. Many of the DW talking heads refer to articles written by Daily Wire staff, who I must therefore assume are: A) not journalists, or B) are journalists working for an organization that despises them…while still using their work as the basis for allegedly accurate, unbiased commentary. Because Lady Ballers offers no counterpoint to this squishy, conniving archetype, I’m left to assume all journos are scum.
The weightier issue centers on the film’s approach to transgenderism. It would be one thing for Boering and his team to satirize the concept of biological men using the loosely defined, socially reinforced rules of modern sport to compete against biological women for money and clout, but the filmmakers stray into murkier territory without even fully establishing whatever points they might have started to make with their premise.
After several games, one of the Lady Ballers, David (David Cone), notices his opponents slinking off the court, some of them in tears and being consoled by their coaches. The realization isn’t played for laughs, even though it follows a comedic montage in which a team of giants takes down wave after wave of determined competitors.
Though David has second thoughts about the ethics of Coach Rob’s plan, this thread is cut short. Worse yet, the various teams against which the Lady Ballers compete are literally seen and not heard. For as much as the movie might purport to stand up for biological women’s right to compete against their own kind in sports, none of the affected characters are even written as characters. All the hard work, revelations, and advocacy hinge on a change of heart by the film’s antagonist (which, confusingly, is also its protagonist, Coach Rob). This would be like relegating Sidney Poitier to a background player in In the Heat of the Night while Rod Steiger does all the heavy lifting.
And I’ll only drive by the distasteful third act revelation that the two Lady Baller siblings (who, again, have different dads but the same mom and point of conception) have impregnated (yes, simultaneously) one of the players that they’d faced in an early match. This would fit right in with an early-2000s Farrelly Brothers comedy. Still, even the guys who gave us Stuck on You would have made the babies-mama a character instead of a conquest.
Finally, we have Alex (Daniel Considine), the spacy, good-hearted oaf whose mistaken entry into a women’s triathlon becomes the seed of Coach Rob’s Lady Ballers scheme. As the film progresses, Alex realizes he’s more comfortable in women’s clothes and begins taking his new identity seriously. In a movie of over-the-top caricatures, Alex has the most impressive evolution; no one takes him seriously until he begins to take himself seriously—or, more to the point, accept that he’s not like his fellow dude-bros.
Toward the end of the film, around the time that the Lady Ballers get a taste of their own medicine when a rival team enlists a group of ripped, towering Black men to compete at the Global Games (again, in the Women’s Basketball category), Alex has a heart-to-heart with Coach Rob. He doesn’t “come out”, exactly, but opens up about how his awakening feelings are more than just a ruse; it’s as touching a moment of vulnerability as an earlier scene in which Coach Rob extolls the virtues of women to his daughter, who wonders if boys are “better” than girls.
Here, Boreing and his writers commit the cinematic equivalent of a hate crime. Coach Rob tells Alex that he’s not transgender; he’s just confused. To some on the Right, this may seem like a narrative victory—a smackdown of the “social contagion” theory of transgenderism. But it is implied from his earliest scenes that there was something going on inside Alex all along; Coach Rob’s “point” would have been stronger if Alex had been completely “normal” before regularly presenting as female for the sake of the scheme. Instead, we get an ice bucket of cruelty splashed on a character who, throughout Lady Ballers, we see transform from a lunkhead wearing cheap wigs at a not-cross-dressing-cross-dressing bar (I’m as confused as you are) to someone who begins wearing different kinds of wigs and feminine ensembles, and invests in really putting himself together.
The filmmakers twist the dagger in Lady Ballers’ final scene, during which the entire cast assembles at a used car lot. In the background, we see Alex, dressed in a completely male-presenting way and looking uncomfortable (and more than a little sad). Coach Rob’s message seems to have really hit home: there is no “T” in “Team”.
It’s not Jeremy Boreing’s responsibility to include trans characters or present an authentic trans perspective (whatever form that might take) in his wacky comedy. But Lady Ballers is weaker for not having “gone there”. Think about Blazing Saddles, one of the all-time-great transgressive comedies. It isn’t a classic because it’s packed-to-bursting with racist jokes: it features a genuine bi-racial bromance between Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder that helped heal race relations through laughter and the breaking down of stereotypes (even as it walked the tightrope of reveling in/mocking them).
In the end, Lady Ballers comes off as a clueless schoolyard bully who’d heard about guys competing against girls in sports and decided to punch down at everything “trans”—never bothering to understand that one can ask for a legitimate debate on the ethics of sex-segregated sports without tarring (or at least implying) all transgender people as being opportunistic, possibly mentally ill poseurs. Ironically, a similar fault lies at the heart of the Barbie movie, which blames all of women’s ills on a phantasmagoric “patriarchy” while also suggesting that a female-run society would similarly seek to curb the rights and roles of men—instead of aiming for equality between the sexes. Once again, a great opportunity for working through difficult societal issues in an entertaining movie is hampered by catchphrases, non-arguments, and the easiest jokes one could think of when considering said issues.
It’s worth restating: The Daily Wire regularly offers nuanced news and commentary, infused as it is with self-proclaimed political biases. Sadly, Lady Ballers, which purports to be a hot-button satire aimed at a wide audience, fails to reach the heights or cultural relevance of even the most average, financially successful mid-2000s comedy.
Hell, it’s not even a “mid” comedy.
*That honor goes to Robert DeNiro (rimshot!).
**A bizarre phenomenon in which audiences respond to comedy with knowing applause instead of laughter.
