There may be a natural ceiling on a movie with the title Balls Up. You might say the same for a movie directed by Peter Farrelly, half of the Farrelly brothers, who were responsible for such comedy classics as Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary. Except that Peter Farrelly actually directed a best picture winner (Green Book), nullifying the very notion of ceilings. So yes, the jejune title is more illustrative of the limited upside of Farrelly’s latest on Amazon Prime, a return to his traditional wheelhouse that’s in line with the funnier 2024 film Ricky Stanicky, also a Prime exclusive.

Balls Up is not just a way to push the envelope of titles you can say in polite company and to make the squares blush, though it is that. In the context of this film, it’s also the name of a new condom made by a company that specialises in them. The condom in question, designed by germaphobe Elijah (Paul Walter Hauser), extends beyond the penis proper and covers the testicles as well. Elijah wants to call it the “Testicle Sentinel,” but marketing bro Brad (Mark Wahlberg) knows that this will never sell. So he comes up with the actual product name, which they will try to sell as the official condom of the World Cup in Brazil. (Apparently not worried about names of condoms that you can say in polite company.)

Unfortunately, the pair bollocks up the pitch to the man making the decisions, Santos (Benjamin Bratt). They make the sale, but then inadvertently trigger the recovering alcoholic in the celebration that follows. Who knew asking the nine years sober man to just sniff a flute of champagne, as a symbolic gesture of partnership, would lead to a bender that lands on YouTube? But before everyone involved is fired by their bosses, Santos ordered VIP tickets for Elijah and Brad to the World Cup final, and that order was never cancelled. So the newly unemployed and mutually distrustful former coworkers attend, and bollocks up again – preventing Brazil from winning the World Cup through their shenanigans. Now they just need to figure out how to get out of the country alive.

It’s a funny idea to pit a whole country against two hapless Americans who interfered with the rightful victory of their beloved football team. For football mad nations, calling the football team “beloved” is really underselling it – it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that football is the only thing that matters. And we’ve all heard that story of the goalkeeper who was killed after he lost an important game for his team. Who knows what a nation let loose on two crass Americans would do to them?

Except Balls Up doesn’t follow through on these possibilities. Instead of this open world approach to comedy, it spends its time in two closed worlds where the guys end up, one of which involves a drug cartel leader played by Sacha Baron Cohen – who isn’t as funny as you would hope or expect. Within these closed worlds, there are traditional Farrelly set pieces involving the sorts of humour you would anticipate in a film called Balls Up. And while some of these get close enough to the mark for a man who made his name, in part, on testicles caught in a pants zipper, they are lacking some sort of fundamental inspiration.

The film also strangely misuses its promising co-stars, who should be there to tease out the central dynamic between Hauser and Wahlberg. Bratt’s character does reappear after the opening that sees him swinging naked through a bar, but is dropped after this one additional scene. More problematically, Balls Up introduces the character who should be their female foil, a local Brazilian lawyer and a known actress, Daniela Melchior, but fails to make proper use of her. She does return, but only after you’ve forgotten she was ever in the movie – except for the nagging part of you expecting a greater fealty to your narrative expectations. Molly Shannon does get correctly utilised as Brad and Elijah’s foul-mouthed (former) boss.

There are some funny fixes in which these two guys find themselves. But perhaps more indicative of where Farrelly finds himself at this stage of his career is that the two also attend a great party at each of their two main stops throughout the Brazilian jungle. It may always have been the Farrelly aesthetic that their hapless characters get to have a good time along the way – just think about the whole extended sequence in Dumb and Dumber where Harry and Lloyd go crazy spending the briefcase money. When the humour isn’t as sharp, you are more likely to notice the underlying pursuit of hedonism, a detail that underscores the bro roots of the comedy.

Balls Up is a reasonable delivery device for a certain brand of comedy that many of us would prefer not go extinct from the landscape. And it’s probably enough to serve as an endorsement of continuing to pursue that sort of comedy. But it isn’t 1996 anymore – that’s the halfway point between Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary, not to mention exactly 30 years ago. As long as you go in knowing this is not classic Farrelly, you’ll probably have an okay time.

 

Balls Up is currently playing on Amazon Prime.