Starring Rob Corddry, Dannah Feinglass, Rob Riggle, Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer, Ed Helms
Written By: Brant Sersen, Brian Steinberg
Directed By: Brant Sersen
Studio: Shout Factory
Buy on Amazon.com link

When I heard Blackballed: the Bobby Dukes Story was coming out on DVD, I was curious how this was going to be. Rob Corddry has emerged as one of the funniest actors on the Daily Show, but I never saw him star in his very own movie before. He’s always been one of those secondary goofy characters. After watching this movie for the first time, I didn’t know what to think of this Bobby Dukes story. Well it certainly could have been funnier…

Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes story is about paintball’s first superstar Bobby Dukes (Rob Corddry). The mockumentary opens up with the story of the Bobby Dukes incident of 1993, being told with action figures of He-Man. Basially he did a sacrilegious thing with the game of paintball and ended up “wiping” off the paint so he could win the game. He was considered a “cheater,” and then Bobby Dukes vanished from the public eye. Or his friends never saw him again, until now…The film takes place 10 years later when Dukes is itching to get back into the game of paintball. He wants to clear his name and take back what’s his, the Hudson Valley Paintball Classic trophy. But first he has to recruit a team to compete and beat the new superstar of Paintball.

This movie was a mockumentary, and it was all improvised which is quite impressive. Mockumentary films are usually really dry with the humor so not every joke is laugh out loud funny. There are only a few mockumentary type of movies that I like (Christopher Guest movies) and not sure I liked this one that much. I thought the funny scenes were too sporadic and not every joke flies out of the ballpark. I thought the funniest characters in the movie were all the secondary ones, and I don’t think Rob Corddry was that funny as he could have been. Maybe the jokes were too subtle for my liking or i’m just a schmuck who just “doesn’t get it.” I thought the funniest actors in this movie were ex-SNLer Rob Riggle and Rob “Inconsiderate Cell Phone Man” Huebel. I’m glad to see Rob Huebel get more acting gigs because his movie theater commercials were the only ones I actually liked and laughed at. He plays a such a dick in this movie, and Rob Riggle plays a lunatic quite well too. I recognized a lot of these actors in this movie but not sure. Each one makes you go, “ok, I know who that is but not sure where I know them from.” Rob Corddry’s sister in the movie, Dannah Feinglass, used to be on this TV show/network called Burly Bear TV. I used to watch it all the time and she used to interview celebrities, dressed up as those movie characters and it was awkwardly funny to watch! Come to think of it, believe a few people from this movie were on Burly TV. But seeing Danna Feinglass interviewing Lord of the Rings actors as a hobbit was quite funny. A lot of people from Upright Citizens Brigade are in the movie, and including fellow Daily Show correspondent Ed Helms. I thought Ed Helms was really funny in the scenes he was in. I wish he was in the whole movie though.

Another weird thing about watching this mockumentary is how close everything was filmed from my hometown. I think a lot of the paintball scenes took place in Liberty, NY and they might have shot at this one place I played paintball once in Dutchess County? It looked exactly like this place too. I’ve only played once and found it to be a lot of fun; but everyone takes their paintball JUST a little bit too seriously. Which is one thing I liked about the mockumentary because the paintball scenes acted like a war scene in a movie. And a lot of the players think they are in battle when they are playing, not to mention that half the people I played with were ex-marines or army vets. I probably broke every rule when I played because I didn’t take in seriously like others did. But anyway, back to the mockumentary..

There is a nice batch of bonus features for fans of the mockumentary to watch. There’s 2 sets of commentary, one with the cast (Rob Corddry, Paul Scheer, Rob Riggle) and a filmmakers commentary featuring Brant Sersen, Brian Steinberg and Chris Lechler. I didn’t listen to either since I never saw this before and not really a big fan of the audio commentary tracks. I’m assuming the cast commentary was the better of two since it’s the comedians of the mockumentary. I watched all the outtakes and deleted scenes, which were actually quite good. The outtakes weren’t really the actors screwing up, but it was the actors’ characters screwing up. I like that way better than the actors screwing up because it makes you think this is a real documentary. The deleted scenes were interesting, including the last one that last over 11 minutes. There’s a warning before hand saying to go get some coffee or use the bathroom (or something along those lines) because its a long clip. For improvisational movies, they usually just let the camera roll so this is a result of that. It’s pretty funny because of how insane Rob Riggle is. There’s one or two other things on this Dvd but I didn’t bother to check those out.

Overall, this mockumentary has it’s funny moments, but I think they are too sporadic. The secondary characters are far more funnier than Rob Corddry is, and that’s disappointing because he’s capable of far better. I’d rent this first to see if you like it before buying it.

Features:
Cast Commentary
Filmmaker Commentary
Outtakes
Deleted Scenes
“Around The World With Bobby Dukes” Featurette
Rob Corddry Screen Test

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Favorite Scenes: I like the scene with Ed Helms, and scenes with Rob Riggle..and Inconsiderate Cell Phone man was pretty good in this too. I like the outtakes of him taunting the crowd.
Rating: NR
Running Time: 91 minutes
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