How Boreing is Lady Ballers?

The Daily Wire released the irreverent comedy, Lady Ballers,  to great fanfare across the conservative universe. The Daily Wire touted it’s best ever launch day and best ever subscription day thanks to the film’s release. The film also enjoys a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes thanks to Daily Wire fans rating the movie positively (much to the chagrin of the mainstream media. How dare the audience for which the film was intended leave the film a positive rating?). The Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing wrote, directed and starred in the film making it very “Boreing” indeed (heyo). 

Disclaimer: 

We all support The Daily Wire. We all support their mission to bring alternative streaming and entertainment to the masses. More than most, I believe that entertainment (fun! stories!) can save the world. So there is a reason this is the first Daily Wire production I have reviewed. It puts me in the awkward position of reviewing the material of “friends” (we aren’t actually friends, I don’t know them) through a critical lens. I want them to succeed therefore I am deeply biased in their favor. Because I respect The Daily Wire so much, I will do my best to fairly judge their material including places where I think it could have been better. 

My recurrent readers know that I never judge a film apples to oranges. Films like Oppenheimer have nothing in common with films like F9 which have nothing in common with films like Journey to Bethlehem which have nothing in common with films like Falling For Christmas (a Netflix original Christmas comedy starring Lindsey Lohan). In analyzing Lady Ballers, I treated the film as a direct to streaming service comedy offering meant to be viewed by conservatives who already had preconceived notions about the content which is exactly what it was and exactly what it intended.

With this frame of reference, the Conservative Critic asks: Is it entertaining? Does it have artistic/intellectual value? And finally Is it liberal propaganda?

The Conservative Critic: Lady Ballers 

Overall Rating: Good

Lady Ballers is an ambitious project. Action movies and dramas are a lot easier to master than a comedy. Comedy is probably the hardest genre and for that reason rarely finds its way to mainstream award acclaim. Anyone can make someone cry, but making someone laugh is an entirely different beast. The Daily Wire’s brave decision to make a political point through laughter is admirable at the onset and they executed it pretty well. 

Lady Ballers is intended as an irreverent comedy and despite its insistence on monologuing its own points (a pet peeve of this critic) – it achieves its goal. The tone and pace reminds viewers of underrated comedies that have solid cult followings like Fist Fight and Here Comes the Boom and maybe even Ride Along. Where the comedy hit, it hit above its weight class. The members of the Daily Wire team who performed many of the roles in the film also performed well, not least of which was Matt Walsh who was genuinely funny despite his shaky material. Billie Rae Brandt as Gwen Wilde (a tough as nails journalist) was also notably funny. Timing is hard to teach so either those two have experience as theatrical actors (as opposed to pundits) or they are naturally very gifted.  

The film had some minor problems primarily with the writing. The story goes stagnant and spends a significant amount of time revisiting the same jokes and themes. It also stumbles (in much the same way as the other comedies of its kind) in delivering the message it intends. Failing to trust its audience, it makes the common mistake of overexplaining itself like the end of an episode of Full House. 

With the goal of comically exposing the lies that the militant leftist mafia pushes on young people in regard to sexuality and gender, the film is definitely right wing and while some of it’s additional themes are hazy and perhaps needed more thought, it’s central mission is clearly achieved. 

Overall Lady Ballers is good and it is worth the Daily Wire+ subscription to check it out. 

Is it entertaining? 

Rating: Funny but at times slow

Lady Ballers is funny. The physical comedy of large athletic men wearing terrible wigs and very casually pretending to be women is inherently a laugh and one Hollywood has employed many times before. But it’s also a very witty film relying on timing, situations and one-liners to garner harder earned laughs than some men in silly wigs. Lady Ballers does not take the easy way out on their comedy and actually handles the issue of true transgenderism with quite a bit more delicacy than expected. The plot features men who (by-and-large) are not actually transgendered but instead are running a scam on the basis of transradicalism. The effect is a more thoughtful and gentler metaphor for the scam of the entire progressive agenda and how it harms persons experiencing gender dysphoria as much as it harms women in sports. Because they didn’t simply show a realistic looking transperson in a swimsuit with male parts (think Alex Stein in target) and use that as the tool for a laugh, the comedy is elevated to a more intellectual space and one that cannot possibly be characterized as “transphobic.”

That being said, the film runs out of things to say somewhere in the middle and repeats the same gag over and over again making it a bit boring instead of just Boreing. The climax is messy and not particularly funny or interesting but it does work to give the film a tidy conclusion. 

Despite its slow moments, Lady Ballers is mostly entertaining and will make you laugh. It is funny enough to carry viewers through to the finish. 

Does it have intellectual/artistic value? 

Rating: Not bad for a bunch of pundits

Some of the actors who are actual ‘actors’ (people who have had experience playing various characters for the purposes of entertainment versus people who are media trained for another purpose) did not perform as well as some of the Daily Wire pundit team. Boreing held his own very well as the lead and played a pretty funny and believable dirt bag on a journey to redemption. Walsh took a pretty cheesy role and really made it something funny and charming. Brandt, who from what I can tell has no experience as an actor much to my shock, steals the show as a tough-talking journalist who takes advantage of the story. Brandt captures ‘crazy but powerful’ in a really hilarious way and is probably the most credible and commercial performance of the entire production. 

The film’s limited weakness is its writing. While quite funny and not per se ‘bad’ in any way, there are moments that needed editing. The film routinely feels the need to explain verbally to its viewers its worldview or a particular theme. Brandt as Gwen Wilde delivers a deeply cringey (not Brandt’s fault) monologue about how bad for society divorce is using rapid fire statistics like they’re back on the set of a Daily Wire show. This isn’t necessary at all, the viewers totally understood that the film was displaying the divorce of the Boreing’s character as a flaw which is on the path of mending. The movie doesn’t need to give viewers the stats. That’s what the other Daily Wire shows are for. The effect of monologues like those (it was not the only one) is that it pulls viewers out of the story and limits the suspension of disbelief which ultimately harms enjoyment and credibility. 

Overall, the production value was high quality and meritorious especially for a crew of people who primarily work in vastly different forms of media. 

Is it liberal propaganda? 

Rating: Right wing think piece 

Lady Ballers is obviously right wing. It never presents itself as anything but right wing. Not only does the film focus on the unfairness of men playing in women’s sports (some hack critics took issue with the realism of the premise because they refused to get the joke) but it also tells the story of men failing to be men and getting lost in false notions about what makes a man. 

Lady Ballers treats actual transpersons with some delicacy where it does posit that transgenderism is not a valid or healthy expression of self but not without compassion for the mental and emotional turmoil that many experience when making decision regarding their gender identity. One of the most important points the film makes is not that most transpeople are bad or scary or trying to cheat at women’s sports, but more so that they aren’t given the opportunity to process their feelings before being shoved into a category. The left’s “embrace and celebrate or die” mentality regarding transgenderism is truly the ideology most attacked at the core of the film. 

It additionally villainizes quite a bit of behavior which may surprise a lot of viewers in terms of ‘toxic masculinity’ (a phrase I doubt Boreing would have used himself). The main character played by Boreing has ruined his life by treating his wife badly and taking her for granted. He is obsessed with his own ego, with “winning” culture and with self-aggrandizing. He’s kind of bad at his job but thinks he deserves to be celebrated anyway. Those traits are not celebrated in the film whatsoever and he is made to seem like the dirtbag he is. 

The only place where Lady Ballers gets truly lost on message is with women. The movie ostensibly is to defend the existence of women’s sports but the film takes jabs at the existence of women’s sports which really muddies the overall message. The jabs themselves are funny but they are inconsistent with the mission. Further, women are routinely painted as monsters or morons in the movie. Even the angelic wife ‘Dharby’ played by Lexi Contursi who is perhaps the only redeemable adult woman in the movie is dumb enough to be shacked up with the ridiculous Walsh character, Kris Dilby. Though Lady Ballers did not seem to understand conservative women very well, nothing about their portrayal of women was insidious or malicious. It just wasn’t particularly flattering or interesting outside of Brandt’s villainous journo bit.

Setting aside the minor issue of inconsistency on women, Lady Ballers is fully a right wing think piece just with jokes and actors and its message is a very consistent conservative one.

Conclusion 

Lady Ballers is funny and well done and definitely one to watch on Daily Wire+.