OVERVIEW
After a condom sponsorship pitch to the Brazilian World Cup committee gets them both fired, marketing executives Brad (Mark Wahlberg) and Elijah (Paul Walter Hauser) decide to still use their free tickets earned in the negotiation to fly to the country and watch the final in a premium spot. There, they commit the worst mistake a human being could ever make: they accidentally prevent Brazil from scoring the tying goal against Argentina in the game’s last seconds. This obviously makes them the most hated men in the country, and now, with the entire Brazilian population chasing them, fans, criminals, and officials alike, they must find a way out alive. Directed by Peter Farrelly, written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, Balls Up has a premise that would have made it a popular rental in the mid-2000s Blockbuster stores, which in 2026 means it lands on streaming and hopes for the best.
BACKGROUND
Since winning the Best Picture Oscar for the ultra-mediocre Green Book, Farrelly seems to be building one of the worst post-winner filmographies in recent memory. After the failed Oscar bait The Greatest Beer Run Ever, he returned to the genre that once made him famous, with no better results: Ricky Stanicky came and went without making any impression. He is set to go back to Oscar bait later this year with I Play Rocky, but for now, he seems interested in regaining the reputation he built in the ’90s as one of the most influential voices in the R-rated comedy genre.
THE REVIEW
At one point in the film, Hauser and Wahlberg’s characters are forced to swallow a condom full of cocaine at gunpoint by a British Sacha Baron Cohen, playing a powerful Brazilian cartel lord who makes tired homophobic and misogynistic remarks as the two do so. You start to ask yourself if 20 years ago, you used to think this kind of scene was funny, or if you have simply grown out of it so fast that watching it now feels like a form of torture.
For Brazilians, watching Cohen dressed in an angel costume, doing a Borat accent, and calling Gisele Bündchen his sister is somehow not even the most absurd leap of logic in this version of Brazil. Filmed in Australia, it has American actors cast as Brazilians who speak Spanish instead of Portuguese, Brazilian women are all horny sex objects, and an Amazon-like jungle connected to Rio de Janeiro, where a tribe of eco-warrior jungle dwellers, one of whom is played by Eric André, lives as if this were an adult version of Jumanji. It is clear none of these people ever bothered to even look at a map to understand the country, nor probably listened to any Portuguese, which might have been passable in 2005 but feels inexcusable twenty years later. The same goes for its ultra-digital, colorless gray palette and for the green screen, which makes multiple scenes, especially in the stadium, look artificial (I have seen more convincing shots in SNL sketches).
Wahlberg plays yet another variation of his character from Ted, while Hauser cycles through the worst tendencies of Josh Gad (the singing bit), Seth Rogen, and Jonah Hill without ever capturing the everyday warmth he usually brings to his performances. The two have little chemistry early on, though it does improve as the film goes along, and there are some genuinely funny moments in the final act involving a crocodile and, later, fish drawn to a boat by piss. By that point, you see a few flashes of the old Farrelly.
But to get there, the film asks you to survive a first hour of poor filmmaking, unfunny jokes, insufferable characters, and, especially if you are Brazilian, a portrayal of your country that is completely disrespectful.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Balls Up is not the worst comedy of the year, but that speaks most to how far the genre has sunk. Moving past its problematic, lazy portrayal of Brazil, the film takes too long for its characters to click or for its jokes to land, and it is painful until it gets there. Awful green screen and terrible color grading make it instantly grating. A few late laughs save it from being a complete waste, but not enough to compensate for the incompetence up to that point.