&#8220Balls of Fury” is the type of comedy you would expect to bring up the rear of the summer movie season.

This attempt to capture the fun and humor of &#8220Dodgeball” – with pingpong as the substitute obscure sport – is rather lame. It would probably be nothing more than a straight-to-DVD throwaway if not for another offbeat performance by Christopher Walken, who once again shows that he can inject life into any project.

&#8220Fury” stars Dan Fogler as Randy Daytona, a down and out former pingpong phenom who gets recruited for a secret mission by an FBI agent (George Lopez). The mission involves Daytona getting invited to an elite pingpong tournament financed by Feng (Walken), a criminal mastermind so elusive, the government doesn’t have any idea what he looks like.

But before Daytona can attend the tournament, he seeks the guidance of a blind pingpong master (James Hong) and his beautiful niece, Maggie (Maggie Q).

For the most part, &#8220Fury” is a standard low-budget comedy, with a mild chuckle here and there.

The cast is rather hit and miss.

Fogler, sort of a poor man’s Jack Black, isn’t dynamic enough to carry the film and Lopez continues to prove he is on the downside of his career.

Hong has a few funny moments in a rather stereotypical role, while Maggie Q does a lot more with her role than you might expect (although it is nowhere near the impact she had in &#8220Live Free or Die Hard.”)

But the real star of &#8220Fury” is Walken, who takes what could have been an uninteresting villain and creates a character who seems to understand he is slumming in a Z-level film.

Whenever Walken is on the screen, &#8220Fury” has some snap and sizzle. Unfortunately, the character doesn’t arrive until about the halfway point and has to take a back seat to other characters for too much time in the second half.

I wish they had refocused during filming and made the movie about Feng, because that is a comedy with some promise. Instead, we are stuck with a below average film that Walken almost single-handedly carries to mediocrity – a feat that is appreciated, but not enough to forgive &#8220Balls of Fury” for its many faults.

DVD dandy of the week

This week’s dandy is &#8220Blades of Glory” (B), a sports-comedy that does get it right.

Of course it helps when you have funnyman Will Ferrell attached to the product, but this is a film that gets plenty of laughs from unexpected places, making it a worthy companion piece to another Ferrell comedy, &#8220Talladega Nights.”

In &#8220Glory,” Ferrell plays Chaz Michael Michaels, a flamboyant male figure skater banned after he gets into a fistfight with his rival Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder) during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

It appears as if the pair will never be allowed to skate again, until Michaels’ former coach (Craig T. Nelson) discovers a loophole that allows them to qualify as a pairs team.

Ferrell and Heder work well together, with Ferrell getting plenty of laughs by playing Michaels like he is the long lost brother of a previous Ferrell character, Frank the Tank, from &#8220Old School.”

&#8220Glory” gets a big assist from real life couple Amy Poehler and Will Arnett, who nearly steal the film as a brother and sister skating team who become Michaels and MacElroy’s main rival.

Jeff and Craig Cox’s screenplay is smart enough to feature a lot of pop culture references, but still leaves room to let its characters develop. The figure skating routines are over-the-top, but walk a fine line between funny and ridiculous (I’ll admit any film that uses Queen’s &#8220Flash Gordon” soundtrack is going to have a soft spot in my heart.)

This isn’t one of the best comedies of 2007, but it still has a lot more laughs than most of the pack, making it well worth your time.

&#8220Blades of Glory” is rated PG-13 for crude humor, language and some drug references and is now available on DVD.