- Starring
- Jeremy Boreing, Daniel Considine, David Cone
- Director
- Jeremy Boreing
- Rated
- Not Rated (We'd say a hard PG-13)
- Genre
- Comedy, Sports
- Release date
- December 1, 2023
- Where to watch
- DailyWire+
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Rating Summary
Over the last few years, as real life has grown increasingly farcical and modern audiences’ senses of humor have atrophied from a steady diet of woke clapter “comedy,” screwball comedies have become a dying art. Arguably the most notable entry in this subgenre to hit theaters in recent memory was 2008’s Tropic Thunder. It’s taken fifteen years and countless Jeremy’s Razors subscriptions to bring it to fruition, but The DailyWire has brought slapstick back to comedy with Lady Ballers.
Lady Ballers
In an attempt to recapture past glory, an aging group of one-time high-school basketball champs don wigs and over-sized braziers so that they might once again dominate, and if they have to break a nail or two (or some actual women) to win, so be it.
In a recent interview, Jeremy Boring, best known as the CEO of The Daily Wire, told Ben Shapiro that when the idea to film Lady Ballers came to him, one of his biggest hurdles wasn’t the incredibly tight schedule that they would have to complete the project, nor was it budgetary. No, the most significant challenge was casting.
As it turns out, even those actors who were blacklisted in Hollywood and labeled as right-wing looneys, those who said that they would be willing to do anything for an opportunity to work with The Daily Wire, had their limits. As Meatloaf once lamented, “[they] would do anything for love, but [they] won’t do that.”
The “that,” in this case, is poking fun at the most ridiculous societal trend in recent memory, the mass hysteria that has huge swaths of the populace militantly indulging the mentally ill in the fantasy that a strong enough case of the feelsies can make a schwanson a hoo-ha.
So, with this massive barrier before him, Jeremy’s only choice was to cast himself in the lead role and draft the rest of The Daily Wire rogues gallery for active duty. With him being the film’s producer, director, co-writer, and star (a challenge that the most veteran of filmmakers would find nigh impossible), in addition to being nearly as inexperienced as the rest of the cast, Lady Ballers should make dumpster fires look like match sticks.
Yet, Jeremy and The Team traverse these obstacles with the grace and skill of a bottom-ranked man in the women’s 100m hurdles. That is to say that compared to the other comedic offerings that are out there, Lady Ballers takes the gold.
Not only is Lady Ballers not a disaster, it’s actually pretty friggin’ funny, which is the only thing that really matters when talking about a comedy. Sure, some of the actors lack the experience to maintain the emotional through-line for as long as a scene might require, looking momentarily uncomfortable as they wait for their turn to speak instead of internalizing what their counterparts are saying or doing. But, for every one of those brief inconsistencies, there’s a 200-pound man in a pink unitard choke slamming a woman half his size into goo or a heavy dose of schadenfreude as the group roasts legacy media.
Don’t get us wrong. We aren’t saying that the cast is bad; it isn’t. 95% of the time, they are present and on point. Further, in those few instances when the movie falters, be it in focus or missed opportunities, it seems more due to a sense of being rushed to complete the film and perhaps also an understandable lack of focus on Jeremy’s part (thanks to wearing so many hats at once) than it does a lack of talent.
The film does have two performances so perfect that they demand a road trip spinoff movie. Matt Walsh plays a stereotypical hippy-dippy liberal who meditates in the front yard while surrounded by rainbow platitudes and happy thoughts. In what might be Jeremy’s greatest accomplishment, Walsh’s signature drowsy and dour demeanor is magically transformed into that of an only marginally aware goober who is undoubtedly known by name at the local weed dispensary. #MoreWalsh
Then there is comedian Tyler Fischer. Fischer, who is best known for his stand-up and YouTube videos, had his feature-length film debut in last year’s Gina Carano-led Terror on The Prairie. In Lady Ballers, he plays a desperate wannabe who desires nothing more than to be one of the guys but whose small stature has long made him the butt of ridicule and derision, which seems to have driven him to the verge of insanity. Fischer easily gives the film’s most realistic performance, and in one of his stand-out moments, he lampoons everyone’s favorite rictus-smile-having lunatic Dylan Mulvaney to deep-gut-laughing inducement.
Final Thoughts on Lady Ballers
Lady Ballers is far from wart-free. It occasionally suffers from a lack of focus on both sides of the camera, and its plot lacks a level of depth that would have made the film’s conclusion that much sweeter. It’s also about 15 minutes too long. But, once it gets going, it will make you laugh… out loud… a lot. More than that, though, is that as ridiculous as it may sound, Lady Ballers is an important movie.
Not only does it come at a time when we need more laughter in our lives to keep from going insane, but, like comedies of old, it holds up a mirror to the logical incongruities of a very serious problem within the current culture. Self-evident truths and immutable characteristics can only be trampled upon by a society for so long before it crumbles. Documentaries like Matt Walsh’s “What is A Woman,” certainly have their place, but the only chance that we have of saving society is by capturing hearts and minds, and nothing does that better than good comedy.
Minor weaknesses notwithstanding, the core cast has a lot of chemistry, and it’s clear that they had as much fun making Lady Ballers as you’ll have watching it.
WOKE ELEMENTS
Lady Ballers is a 100-kiloton anti-woke bunker-buster.
James Carrick
James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.
23 comments
Rob Matthews
December 1, 2023 at 9:47 pm
I usually love Daily Wire content, but i will NEVER watch this movie , i don’t want my kids to watch grown men dress up as women for mockery, that’s what the woke mob does.
Jess
December 2, 2023 at 11:27 am
That’s understandable if you have extremely young children. But it’s labeled something like pg13 for a reason. Anyway, the entire point of the “dressing up and mocking” is to have the character development that shows 1 how stupid society accepting that is and 2 I haven’t seen it yet but I would hope at the end they have the whole “what we did was obviously bad and here’s why”.
If anything this is a great movie for 13 and up to be exposed to. Especially if they’ve been hearing about and learning about this “gender is anything” nonsense in school
Tom Tom
December 2, 2023 at 12:54 pm
I hear you. Stick to your principles because that’s what’s under attack in our culture. But I would encourage you to give it a gander, it’s certainly not kid friendly. I think even teenagers might not be ready for this level of cultural rhetoric. But for a mature audience who can glean the satire from reality ? It’s a hit. At the end of the day our principles should serve to offer people dignity and respect and this movie holds a mirror to a leftist culture that offers neither of those things to anybody.
Moe
December 22, 2023 at 3:49 pm
Here’s what i think. We as parents may not want to “expose” our kids to men-dressed as women, but the schools and colleges are already “on-the-push-this-agenda”. So, whether we like it as parents or not, there is no escaping. I would prefer that we educate our kids ourselves against the Woke elements.
Patrick
December 2, 2023 at 6:44 pm
Mocking whom, that is the question
ray
December 5, 2023 at 12:10 am
But you can educate you kids .
Sweet Deals
December 5, 2023 at 12:31 pm
Personally, I’ve never been a fan of South Park. I have a low tolerance for vulgarity. But I recognize that South Park gains a lot of fans because somewhere between the profuse swearing and the cartoonish foolishness, the show regularly expresses things that lots of ordinary people are thinking but are too afraid or polite to say out loud.
Is Lady Ballers that kind of movie? The kind that uses vulgar foolishness to express what we’re all thinking but we’re too afraid to say? Because I’ve recently watched another vulgar film where it’s clear that the saner main characters do find “liberated” sexual behaviors debasing, but they have to trip over themselves to accept it because they’re afraid of appearing square, bigoted, or incriminating their own selfishness.
James Carrick
December 5, 2023 at 12:36 pm
Lady Ballers is certainly crass, but not so much as South Park.
Patrick
December 6, 2023 at 12:11 am
it’s no South Park. Speaking as a religious conservative with a high tolerance for depictions of the vulgar and the foolish, this film is a solid PG-13. To wit it contains three bleeped-out profanities: two rapid-fire f-bombs, and the d-word you can see in the trailer. This is the most explicit content the film has to offer. There is pervasive innuendo. The guys who made it are religious conservatives. My view is if they can bring themselves to make it, we should be able to bring ourselves to watch it.
Sweet Deals
December 24, 2023 at 12:44 pm
After screening the film over at a friend’s house, I feel the need to express my now-informed opinion.
I personally didn’t enjoy the film. It’s not the vulgarity that I objected to; it was mostly the format. Lady Ballers isn’t a movie in the traditional sense. It feels like a two-minute YouTube parody sketch stretched to last two entire hours. Watching this movie was like looking into a window into an alternate dimension where every person in the world is a hyper-performative social media influencer; not human beings, but outrageous parodies of human beings. Lady Ballers is what the world would look like if the content from heavily curated social media feeds and news websites were not only reality, but the only reality. Every action the characters made was caricatured and exaggerated beyond disbelief. Every line of dialogue in the film sounded like it was ripped from a sound bite. Every set piece was dripping with blatant social commentary. There wasn’t a single shred of earnestness or sincerity depicted at any time. It not only made me want to retch, but after it was over I wanted to go outside, take a breath of fresh air, and thank the Lord that I don’t live in a social media influencer’s universe.
But it made me think a bit about the culture that spawned it. The real villains in this film aren’t the men playing in women’s sports events. In a sane world, these dudes would be laughed off the court and forcefully ejected from locker rooms. I started thinking that the real villain here was the journalist; the lady who knows it’s all a scam but makes a deal to sponsor the team knowing it would generate a lot of attention and revenue. The Dylan Mulvaneys and Lia Thomases of the world wouldn’t be as wealthy or famous as they are if they didn’t have powerful enablers in journalism and in corporate boardrooms promoting them as heroes, putting them on magazine covers and paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars to sponsor their brands. They’d just be nothing more than men wearing women’s clothing that nobody would care about. It made me think really hard about why people today willfully espouse absurd beliefs and act in obnoxious ways, and I think it’s because we created a culture that not only intentionally focuses on blatant absurdities, but rewards it with power and status. It’s like the fairy tale about the Emperor who had no clothes, except instead of the townsfolk politely lying out of fear, the Emperor is being paid handsomely to stand naked in front of a camera and advertise his new invisible clothing line, and the townsfolk rush to buy it because the Emperor endorsed it and they’ve been led to believe that invisible clothes would make them look regal and sophisticated, and not totally naked.
Considering that the film was produced and acted by a collection of people who make their living as social media influencers and online journalists, I would half-joke and ask if these people are self-aware enough to be lampooning themselves, because they too are part of the problem. Even though these people specialize in conservative messaging, they also make money by cherry-picking and amplifying the influence of outrageous deeds to generate clicks and build audiences. If journalists didn’t put the spotlight on those who are unworthy of our time and attention, they wouldn’t receive as much of it or be taken as seriously as they are. Journalists could expose fools, but could they also do it without unintentionally promoting them and giving them larger platforms?
After watching this movie, I think I need to do a serious decontamination. I’m going to turn off my computer, go outside, and spend more time with some real human beings whose lives and worldviews aren’t influenced by how many YouTube videos they’ve watched or how many clicks they get. I think it would be healthy for me.
Chuck
December 1, 2023 at 10:46 pm
Just watched it with my wife and teenage kids. I was surprised how sweet the ending was. Best comedy in a long time.
Whirled Peas
December 2, 2023 at 11:19 am
“they have to break a nail or two (or some actual women) to win, so be it.”
“there’s a 200-pound man in a pink unitard choke slamming a woman half his size into goo”
Inviting audiences to watch an hour and a half of violence against women is the part that I worry about most.
James Carrick
December 2, 2023 at 12:35 pm
That’s exactly the point. In real life, women are being trounced by mentally ill men in sporting events. In a recent MMA match a man broke the skull of his female competitor. This movie uses farce to point out just how dangerous and awful this is.
Patrick
December 2, 2023 at 2:18 pm
If you think conservatives who like DW are laughing at the thought of women getting beaten up by men you might not quite have your finger on the pulse. The point is this is happening to real women today, cheered on by a culture of feckless moral cowards. The ideology that permits this sort of injustice is the butt of the joke. The Krises of the world who promote ideas that make them feel good without any thought of the consequences.
Mo
December 6, 2023 at 8:40 pm
Have you even watched it? You do realize that the people in it are ACTORS. The women chose to be a part of it. Plus, those scenes are only a short montage of the men. The actual story is quite poignant and powerful… but you would know that if you’d seen it. Not that it matters, but I am female and I thought it was one of the best movies I’ve seen recently.
Patrick
December 2, 2023 at 12:26 pm
My favorite part of this conversation is the feminists on Reddit griping about female stereotypes like it’s 2014.
As usual, your take is fair and helps put my finger on some of the things that had me less satisfied while watching. Totally agree Walsh was one of the best parts, and Tyler Fischer was absolutely indispensable. Did you think the film handles it’s running gags well? I found it odd that, for example, the clearly set-up running fat jokes and PTSD jokes around David Cone fizzled out without too much payoff, while “how much” guy just fell flat for me every time. Other than that, the jokes were great.
Mary Souza
December 4, 2023 at 12:19 pm
After this trailer, I am anxious to see the movie! I was the co-sponsor of Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which was the first in the nation to require only biological females on women’s teams. Even in conservative Idaho, political correctness made the bill difficult to pass, but we did succeed. Here’s the logic many folks don’t realize: If a women’s team brings on even one biological male, the team’s performance level increases immediately. Then the competing teams in that conference must all do the same to keep up. Very soon the teams will be entirely biological males, and the women will be sitting in the stands…again. Title IX will be useless. Comedy is a powerful weapon. Thank you to all who worked against the social tide to produce this movie.
Richard Voss
December 9, 2023 at 10:10 am
The similarity to Southpark is that this example of satire illustrates the absurdity of a current societal fixation by extending it to its logical extreme. It’s effectively a screen illustration of so many casual conversations among friends about where all the nonsense is headed if men can magically become women whenever it’s convenient, making no more commitment to their claim than to don a caricature of female attire.
The true female athletes depicted in the film are perfectly cast. By juxtaposing the authenticity of real female athletes against the delusion of males-pretending-to-be-females, the movie succeeds in bringing home its main point: Men and women are irreducible to their respective adornments. If we fall for the contrary fallacy, then society merely learns to demean women, while men unlearn how to be men.
Cindy
December 9, 2023 at 12:07 pm
I did not understand the end of the film with Candace Ownes and Matt Walsh. Can someone explain it to me?
Richard Voss
December 9, 2023 at 2:55 pm
They struck me as the Super-Secret Anti-Woke Patrol. But I also thought that was Jeremy Boreing’s way of clarifying to us, “Surprise! It was Matt Walsh all along—so non-drowsy & non-dour, hence virtually unrecognizable…” I think this is what JC meant by “Jeremy’s greatest accomplishment.”
Cindy
December 16, 2023 at 11:57 am
Thanks for the help on this. What confuses me is that the real Matt Walsh would never enter into a relationship with another woman, at least that is how he presents himself as a faithful husband and father in real life. So how could the real Matt Walsh pretend to be Kris who was involved with Rob’s ex?
aaron
January 6, 2024 at 3:13 pm
This was a pretty woke movie, its pretty biased to pretend it isn’t extremely woke just because it is from Dailywire
Richard Voss
January 6, 2024 at 5:09 pm
Filled to the brim with woke elements, yes, but as a parody. So, quite the opposite of woke.