Expect nothing from this comedy and there are a few surprising hilarious moments. However, I would say ‘balls’ to it being a work of comic genius from director Robert Ben Garant who is the co-writer with Thomas Lennon (also starring as Karl Wolfschtagg).

Dan Fogler is worth watching as Randy Daytona, a child ping-pong prodigy; having lost a tournament to an embarrassing cliché of a German opponent back in the 80s is making a living doing ping-pong tricks for a cheap variety show. His body shape alone can generate laughter and he uses this to great effect as he resembles a slightly bigger Danny Devito with a lot more hair. His clownish antics are at times quite absorbing and it is the slapstick more than anything that provides the most laughs. When Randy is picked by an FBI agent to go under cover at an illicit ping-pong match run by Feng (Christopher Walken), he has to get up to ping-pong standard with the help of Master Wong (James Hong) and his niece Maggie (Maggie Q).

Walken, after his recent performance in Hair Spray, seems to have lost his lustre and his style is rather limp and a little out of condition here. It’s not his fault; the baddie Feng is a hardly a well drawn character to begin with and Walken ends up looking like a sad pantomime dame on screen. Perhaps Walken should avoid comedies altogether. I would be interested to know what any other Walken fans have to say about this.

The script can hardly provide any memorable quotes except for one that will always stick in my mind: ‘It is better to die like a tiger than live like a pussy’. I’ll try that one out as a piece of Confucian wisdom to impress my friends. There is also novelty in a spoof bringing together the unusual elements of ping-pong and martial arts but it is overall too reliant on formulae and just, well, silly most of the time. It’s not bad for dumbed-down American comedy though.

My advice is to wait until it comes out on DVD, sit back, suspend all disbelief and just let yourself go with the flow of it, but, whatever you do, don’t start to think about it or you are lost.