Movie Review: Balls Up

Amazon Prime Video subscribers will see the promotional image for this new soccer comedy at the top of their feed when they log in. Unless there is an NBA playoff game happening at the moment, then they will have to scroll down to the Top 10 In The US, or Featured Originals and Exclusives section. There it sits, beckoning. A new movie starring Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg (Wahlburgers), Paul Walter Hauser, and Sacha Baron Cohen. Must be funny, right? Or at least worth a late night watch? 

[Content warning: This article contains references to and discussion of genitalia.] 

All-Star Cast

Mark Wahlberg is one of those big Hollywood names that can sell a movie on its own. Much like The Rock Dwayne Johnson,  Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts(?), Zendaya (??) you get it. It doesn't matter what the plot is, "We're watching the new [actor] movie." Marky Mark is still one of those actors for some reason, despite:

• Not being a great actor
• Becoming ultra-conservative performative Christian weirdo
• Being a violent racist
• And so forth

But you usually know what you're getting with a Marky Mark movie. It won't be great, but it might be fun. That is supposedly what might compel a person to view Balls Up (2026).

Then you have Paul Walter Hauser. I'll be honest, when I read his name my brain pictures the guy from My Name Is Earl (Ethan Suplee). But PWH is actually his own individual guy, and who is also not Paul Thomas Anderson. What's with these three-names people? (We'll touch on that here in a minute). You might recognize him as Richard Jewell from the titular movie Richard Jewell (2019), or as the not-Liam-Neeson cop in the new The Naked Gun (2025) movie, among other credits. In this film he is cast as the token funny fat guy foil to Mark. Probably the wrong casting choice.

And of course the inimitable Sacha Baron Cohen (another three-namer!). In this author's humble opinion we live in a post-SBC era, so it also felt miscast to have him in this flick. Don't get me wrong, I laughed my little butt off during Borat (2006), and enjoyed many of his other projects and appearances. Who can forget him as the train Station Inspector in Hugo (2011) where we all reveled in the magic of Cinema!  However, he has a fairly lengthy "Controversies, criticisms and lawsuits" section of his Wikipedia page--some of which is difficult to not-think-about when seeing him perform. He is still capable of being very funny, but some of it hits different now that we're in Woke 2. 

Molly Shannon is shown in some of the "covers" that are "surfaced" to you, the Amazon Prime Video viewer. And honestly, that did more to make me click "Play" than anything else about this movie. Unfortunately it's a minor role as an exec.

Comedy enjoyers may also note that Eric André is in this movie. So like, this cast seems good on paper maybe, right?

Three Names

What's in a (3) name? Would it not smell just as sweet to be kissed by a rose on the grey? The tenuous connection I want to make with these two (2) three-named actors is that, um...isn't it weird how when a person becomes known as a killer or psychopath or whatever, we go with the three-name structure? Lee Harvey Oswald (assassinated JFK, allegedly (he was a patsy)), John Wilkes Booth (Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly), John Wayne Gacy (innocent clown), Barack HUSSEIN Obama (Send in the clowns drones).

Do you see what I'm getting at? These actors are SUS! Can we enjoy a movie that features such potentially dubious persons?

The Plot

No Spoiler Summary:

MW and PWH work for a condom company, invent a new condom that also covers the testicles, and try to get an advertising/sponsorship deal with FIFA World Cup. That's all you really need to know. Antics ensue obviously. 

Light Spoiler Plot Overview:

A movie like this cannot be spoiled. But skip this part if you don't like knowing anything about a movie so that you can discover it for yourself. What are you doing reading this though?

[Author's note: I watched this like they (whoever created this hot garbage) probably assumed I would. Late at night, half paying attention while also scrolling social media on my laptop while playing a game and texting on my phone, with a cup of Friday libations underway.]

So PWH is the inventor of this new condom that also covers the balls (testicles). Throughout the movie, various characters will in wonderment, repeat as refrain "Why has no one ever thought of this before?" Anyways, the movie opens with him giving a presentation to the board where he (a bumbling fool) struggles to demonstrate his prophylactic product with a normal sized huge anatomically accurate vibrating, um, tool. He has a dumb name for the condom too--The Testicle Sentinel! (the -le / -el of it all is disqualifying enough in itself, from a marketing perspective). What a rizzless shlub. Luckily cool guy handsome guy MW is there to re-Christen (feels bad to invoke Christ in this context) the condom as "Balls Up" (the titular line!).

Guess what also involves balls that is going to happen? The FIFA World Cup! (Soccer balls, not testicles, well...both actually, I suppose). And wouldn't it be great if we could get a sponsor deal with them for our new balls condoms? That would reach an audience of like 5 billion viewers, which would be awesome for our brand! Let's send you to Brazil to pitch to Benjamin Bratt (head of FIFA?).

But PWH you are such a loser & buffoon, we are going to team you up with #1 cool guy MW, and actually he will be presenting your invention to FIFA. Hahaha what a bizarre coupling! The cool guy and the fat pathetic guy together! What a delicious no-fail comedy recipe.

Obviously Mark delivers a piping hot oozing with cheese Wahlburger to the FIFA board and they eat it up. They score the deal! Let's all celebrate together with a night out! Uh oh, though. FIFA man B-Bratt is 9 años sober! And in a moment of weakness he gives up his chip to go super-party-mode. As you can imagine, Brazilian night life is way more rambunctious and also unctuous than what we have in America. The music! The lights! The big butted women!

At this point I'm kinda foggy on exactly what the tipping point was, whether FIFA's wife was mad, or someone else important got word of this wild partying. The deal fell thru. They lost the deal. No deal. You're fired. Before MW & PWH have to return home with their tails between their legs, they enjoy their remaining time in Brazil at a qualifying soccer match between Brazil and Argentina. 

During the soccer match our leading men begin to form a bond in their failure and also begin drinking (alcohol?) from flasks. This is a true to life lesson that the children reading should take to heart: problems that are created from alcohol use can also be solved by more alcohol. They're drinking and bonding and notice "hey, this team/stadium is sponsored by a not-our-condom-brand condom brand." And the team mascot is a big sausage. Food sausage, argues MW. No, penis representation sausage, believes PWH. 

They don't use our condom brand and now they mock us with a sausage mascot. Our boys (now sauced) and the Sausage begin taunting each other, which eventually culminates with PWH rushing the field to try to tackle the sausage, with MW chasing after PWH trying to stop him. Oblivious to everything around them they run onto the field and wouldn't you know, MW accidentally blocks a game winning Brazil goal with his face.

The crowd is enraged. "EL STUPIDOS" the entire stadium chants. "EL STUPIDOS" Brazilian futbol viewers all over the city, the state, the country are yelling at their televisoras. Uh oh! Mark and Paul are now on the lam as enemies number 1 (tied) as they are outcast from Brazilian society and also instantly recognizable to every single Brazilian because of their stupido faces on TV. 

You know what, I'm getting pretty tired of going blow by blow through this stupido movie. Here's the rest:

They go to jail. They escape and go on the run. They are pursued by angry/bad people. They are rescued. The rescuer is a drug lord (SBC) who turns them into drug mules by making them swallow Balls Up condoms full of cocaine, but by doing so earns the good graces of the drug lord (who is Argentinian and is happy they messed up the game for Brazil). Until handsome guy MW tries to bone-down the drug lords wife. They go on the run again. Get lost in the rainforest. Get rescued by a hippy commune (ft. Eric André (interjection: he provides some desperately needed 3rd act comedy relief, in what is supposedly a comedy movie)). Until crazy hippy lady leader of the cult finds out that MW&PWH killed a gator accidentally because it ate the cocaine condoms they pooped out and its heart exploded. So they are on the run again. And eventually rescued again by, I think, the Argentinian army? I dunno, you get it. 

[End Plot / Spoilers section]

Critical Analysis

This movie sucked bad. I don't know if it was bad casting, or bad editing, but it felt so dull, boring, lifeless, uninspired. In theory I should like a movie that is centered around dick & ball jokes. Some of the jokes I even thought "that was written funny, that should be a good joke here, why am I not finding it funny in the movie?"

PWH was so dry and flat. This was definitely a casting mistake. MW needs a Will Ferrell type as his buffoon companion. Someone who can actually carry the "comedy" part of what is supposed to be a funny movie. At times, PWH character felt like a role for Melissa McCarthy (I think she could've crushed it). Would it be too sexual for our virtuous at-home-movie-goers if a woman was handling or talking about cock'n'balls so much?

As far as that goes, the sexuality and vulgarity contained within is pretty tame. Besides the realistic purple sexual aid shown at the beginning of the movie, most of it is more of a "bananas and kiwis" level of humor. Perhaps to appeal to Mark Wahlberg's strong Christian sensibilities. Could it have been a better movie it was more unabashedly raunchy? 

The whole thing just felt lifelessly bad to the point where I wondered if it was written by AI. This is an unfortunately reality of our current world where we have to consider the possibility that a plagiarism machine regurgitated a pile of slop that resembled a script. An AI computer that was trained on 100000 hours of 14 year old boy's group chats data. Apparently it was written by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, who actually have some decent credits (Deadpool movies). So what gives? I like sophomoric comedy and this was a total dud.

Maybe this came from an Amazon executive boardroom "We need something for the FIFA World Cup" (if it's still happening in USA--an increasingly dangerous place for many types of people). Or some sort of insider-Hollywood deal for studio tax write-offs, or because Marky Mark's health insurance ran out. You know, the types of things that we shouldn't have to be aware of as casual film enjoyers, but that somehow are made known to us via the devious and duplicitous actions of unscrupulous billionaires. 

Maybe some son-of-a-B(illionaire) was like "hehehueuheuhueheuh balls" and that was enough to get this off the ground. (Reader if you didn't make the connection: the balls at the center of Balls Up are both soccer balls and testicles balls, which is very funny).

I figured this would be a bad movie, but at least be casually funny. Even The Family Plan 2 (2025) is decently funny as a family action comedy. This is a real stinker. It currently has a 4.6/10 on IMDB.com, which anything below a 5 is straight doo doo. (btw, did you know that imdb is making you create an account and log in to view user reviews now???!)

Can you tell how I progressively lost my steam for writing this so-called-review as it progressed? I mainly reviewed this because it is the most recent thing I've watched and I felt like creating a new article for the website. 

PoundExclaim#! Rating:

⚽⚽⚽⚽⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪⚪

4/10 balls (what, you mean you only have 1?!)