Last Updated on April 16, 2026 by Monica Castillo
I entered Balls up with a hope of something lame. Not mean-dumb. The desirable type of dumb. The type in which you laugh and then somewhat ashamed that you laugh, then laugh more due to the ashamedness. Dumb and Dumber is not the comedy of stupid people, it is the comedy of how stupid people can be loyal, still be a brave guy, still drive all the way through the country in a van shaped like a dog. That’s different.
This one? I don’t know.
The first scene is effective. I must admit it. Brad (Mark Wahlberg) and Elijah (Paul Walter Hauser), two men at a marketing company, are selling a condom that is all-encompassing. Not just the frank. The beans too. Elijah refers to it as The Testicle Sentinel, so peculiar and narrow and almost literary a title that I found myself laughing at hearing it. A Brazilian tourism man (Benjamin Bratt trying the best with nothing) claims that the name is too clinical. Elijah wonders a moment. Then: “Balls Up.”
Okay. Fine. You got me.
There’s a mascot at the World Cup. Elijah kicks it in the groin. Chaos. And during some twenty minutes I believed it might have worked something out in this film–that cleverness was not the way forward in studio comedies but sincerity. Commit to the bit. See it through. Don’t wink at me.
However, at that point the film turns into a pursuit. Two Americans on the run in a nation that is out to kill them. And this is where I began to feel a little unnerved, as Brazil becomes a battleground of violent crowds and machetes and people who apparently have nothing better to do than to chase down a couple of idiots who have just ruined a soccer match. It’s not offensive exactly. It’s lazy. It is the type of lazy that attempts to conceal itself behind the excuse of it being merely a comedy and even finds a way of indicating that a single bad play could turn a entire nation into a lynch mob.
I continued to think about Paul Walter Hauser. He’s the real thing watch “Black Bird” if you don’t believe me and he’s trying so hard here. At one point, Elijah describes the reason why he invented the condom in the first place and it has something to do with feeling safe and Hauser takes it entirely straight. No punchline. A guy, just a guy, being vulnerable two seconds. The movie doesn’t know what to do with that. So it switches to Wahlberg making a face.
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And Wahlberg. I like Wahlberg in the right part, look. Lone Survivor. The Other Guys. Even “Ted” which succeeded since he was the straight man and a stuffed animal. But here he is meant to be a talkative salesman, a guy who can talk his way out of anything, and Wahlberg has never successfully portrayed the role of a guy who can talk his way out of anything. He stars female-punching guys. Or shoot. There’s a difference. It is putting him in the role of a smooth-talker, when a hammer would be the screwdriver.
I don’t hate “Balls Up.” This movie would not have earned the hate it would demand. I just feel tired. Sick of comedies that lose track of the fact that they are supposed to be about something. Sick and tired of seeing good actors attempt to bring dead scripts to life. Sick and tired of the Farrelly name on something that has not a particle of the Farrelly warmth.
I have one scene that I revisit. Towards the end of the film Elijah and Brad are on the run in a favela and are fed by an elderly lady. She doesn’t speak English. They don’t speak Portuguese. Not a minute passes without someone uttering something funny. She merely feeds them. And they eat. And the movie breathes. Then one is struck on the head with a frying pan and we are running again.
I would like to have seen that scene as the entire film. Or at least some more of it. Since that is what happened with the Farrelly brothers at their best they knew that stupidity and kindness do not go together. They’re neighbors. Balls Up is aware of the location of the neighbor. It never even takes the trouble to knock.
Balls Up (2026) Parents Guide
Violence & Intensity: The movie opens with a mascot getting punched in the groin. That’s the tame part. What follows is a hundred minutes of two idiots running from angry Brazilian soccer fans who want to kill them. Not “want to scare them.” Want to kill them. Machetes show up. Mob violence. A scene where our heroes hide in a favela while men with sticks and pipes search door to door. It’s played for laughs, which means the movie never takes the danger seriously, but the danger is still there people getting kicked, slammed, thrown through windows. One extended sequence involves a stolen golf cart and a very steep hill. Someone hits a wall. Someone else gets dragged behind the cart. It’s cartoon violence, sure, but the kind that leaves bruises. For a younger kid? Too much. For a thirteen-year-old? You’ll be explaining why an entire country wants to murder two Americans over a soccer game, and I don’t know if you want to have that conversation.
Language and profanity: Constant. Relentless. Wahlberg’s character alone says the F-word maybe thirty times. Hauser’s character uses it differently more like punctuation, less like aggression but it’s still there. Shit, ass, damn, hell those are practically breathing sounds in this movie. One scene has a guy screaming “mother ” before getting hit with a frying pan. That’s the joke. The cut-off curse. It’s fine if you’re an adult. For a fourteen-year-old? They’ve heard worse at school. But the movie also has a mean streak I don’t love. Not slurs exactly, but a casual cruelty in how the characters talk to each other. Brad calls Elijah “weird” and “creepy” more times than I could count, and it never lands as banter.
Sexual Content / Nudity: This is the tricky one, because the whole movie is about a condom. But here’s the thing: the movie is weirdly chaste. You see the product. You see diagrams. You see a mascot dressed as a giant testicle (I wish I were joking). But actual nudity? None. Sex scenes? None. There’s a conversation about whether the condom covers “the beans as well as the frank” that’s a direct quote and a lot of jokes about erections and application methods. But no one takes their clothes off. No one has sex on screen. It’s all talk. Graphic talk, sure.
Drugs, Alcohol & Smoking: Drinking happens constantly. Every bar, every celebration, every scene set in Brazil involves someone holding a beer or a caipirinha. No one gets sloppy drunk in a way the movie judges, it’s just background texture. No drugs. No smoking. One character mentions weed in passing, but you never see it. So that’s the cleanest category by far. Which feels strange to say about a movie called “Balls Up,” but here we are.
Age Recommendation: Fourteen and up. Maybe fifteen. The violence is too much for younger kids, not because it’s gory, but because it’s mean. The language is too much for kids who still think swearing is the height of rebellion. And the sexual humor isn’t explicit, but it’s constant, and it’s weirdly specific, and you might get tired of explaining what “the Testicle Sentinel” is supposed to do.
If your kid has seen “Deadpool” and handled it fine, they’ll handle this. If “Dumb and Dumber” felt borderline, this is further over the line. Not because it’s smarter. Because it’s dumber in a way that requires more explaining.
One last thing: the movie thinks Brazil is a war zone. It’s not. But your kid might come away thinking it is. So maybe have a map handy. And a conversation ready.
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