About a year ago, my younger brother — a top Second Unit Director in major productions (Killers of the Flower Moon, The Joker, The Irishman, a hundred more) and a former college basketball star — asked me to develop what could have been the first and last big movie he might ever direct. Our idea, about five middle-aged losers who seek athletic glory by redefining themselves as women to beat actual female basketball teams, would have triggered every snowflake in Hollywoke and canceled my brother (I’m a longtime industry exile). I pitched the concept last summer to Daily Wire Entertainment producer Dallas Sonnier. In an incredible twist of irony, Dallas hinted that they may have just made that very movie. Last weekend, the hint became the premiere of Lady Ballers on Dailywire.com.
“It’s women’s basketball, boys,” explains Gibson. “Nobody watches.”
More than almost any other conservative company, the Daily Wire is putting its money where its mouth is. Of course, to earn this money, it first had to assemble the most entertaining roster of speakers accessible on any site. They are political analyst and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, humorist provocateur Matt Walsh, poli-cultural opinionist Michael Knowles, bestselling novelist-scholar Andrew Klavan, and traditionalist warrioress Candace Owen. Their bullpen includes eminent psychologist and liberal inflamer, Dr. Jordan Peterson. All of them ascribe to (Andrew) Breitbart’s Law: “Politics is downstream from culture.” And all appear in the funny, brutal, yet occasionally touching Lady Ballers. (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: Escape From Bizarro World)
Lady Ballers is the brainchild of Daily Wire CEO and co-founder Jeremy Boreing, who cowrote, directed, and stars in the picture. And what it lacks in Hollywood slickness and polish, it overcompensates for in sheer chutzpah, of the type absent in Tinseltown for over a decade. Once the factory for some of the previous generations’ culture-shaking comedies (National Lampoon’s Animal House, Tootsie, Sixteen Candles, American Pie, Tropic Thunder), Hollywood now lacks the talent and courage to make any comedy at all. Tropic Thunder had Robert Downey, Jr. in blackface for much of the film and nobody whimpered. Try that bit today and you’ll hear the wailing of the damned, AKA the Democrats.
Boreing astutely blames Obama for the death of comedy, when mocking him or his blunders became “racist” in media speak. “There has not been a true comedy made since Barack Obama became president,” Boreing said on The Ben Shapiro Show (starts 4:50). “Barack Obama destroyed three things — rock’n roll, comedy, and America.”
Not that the movie industry would make a good comedy even if it could. Its militant woke operatives agree with the most ludicrous notions ever conceived. That baby murder is a “reproductive right,” that white hatred is “anti-racism,” that black crime is “social justice,” and that the world’s about to melt down from global warming. And the funniest canard of all — yet inviolate in media to the point of instant erasure if questioned — is that men can be women. No one in Hollywood would dare touch that third rail, other than my brother just before his bailout. But the Daily Wire did, and with great success.
Like every regular guy over the age of 20, Boreing enjoyed raucous silly comedies such as Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. The Vince Vaughn-Ben Stiller hit serves as an unofficial model for Lady Ballers. Boreing amusingly plays former championship-winning high school basketball coach Rob Gibson, now down, out, and divorced, with visiting rights on his young daughter, Winnie (a delightful Rosie Seraphine Harper). Gibson’s ex-wife (Lexie Contursi) is living with an effete neo-hippie played by alpha male Matt Walsh. Walsh is actually funnier in his real persona, which makes for a great reflexive ending.
When Gibson runs into former player Alex (Daniel Considine) waitering at a drag restaurant, he gets the thought to race him against elite women runners for money. His crushing victory inspires a grander idea — reunite the old team for women’s basketball glory. Then follows a nonstop gagfest that not only pulls no punches but throws them at full power. In fact, the entire picture is a refreshing culture shock at an Airplane-level pace. (READ MORE: Marvel-Less Movies)
Gibson’s team, the Lady Ballers, more than dominate the female players, they devastate them. Boreing’s game montages are visceral and effective, as is his whole direction. The cultural mockery is fluid not forced and all the sharper for it. To understand the rules of the woke universe they’re entering, for instance, the team gets a blackboard lesson from little Winnie, using all the ridiculous liberal gibberish of the day, like “demi boy.”
Most of the jokes pay off, such as the team entering the locker room during a packed, loud men’s basketball game then exiting to a tomblike stadium for their contest. “It’s women’s basketball, boys,” explains Gibson. “Nobody watches.” But director Boreing cleverly intersperses the humor with poignant touches, like the faces of the beaten girl athletes whose hopes and hard work have been quashed. “I didn’t make the rules,” Gibson says. Which is the truest line in the movie.
And the woke-bashing isn’t limited to gender confusion, just the opposite. Lady Ballers features an element that was once a movie staple and is now rarer than a straight white couple in a TV ad — hot women. In fact, it flaunts it with a very sexy and funny Billie Rae Brandt as a sexually aggressive TV reporter who promotes Gibson’s scam for her own career while frustrating him no end. (READ MORE: A Christmas Moral for Women)
The non-actors playing the team members all rise to the occasion, if not as smoothly as professional actors would have. But that wasn’t Boreing’s fault. “Literally every singe actor we went out to for every single role told us no,” he told Shapiro (9:50). That’s Hollywood today. But thanks to the Daily Wire and Lady Ballers, it no longer has the last unfunny word.
