Lady Ballers is a 2023 sports comedy film directed by and starring Jeremy Boreing.
Coach Rob (Boreing) is a former basketball coach who has now become an estranged father, divorced from his wife, and generally feeling dissatisfied. After bumping into his old friend/student Alex (Daniel Considine), now a crossdresser, he is motivated to join a sports competition. After getting rejected as the men's events are full, Alex shows up still wearing a wig and gets mistaken for a trans woman, getting himself entered into the women's tournament and winning it with flying colors. Rob sees an opportunity to reunite his basketball team and have them be competitive despite their age and middling talent - by having them pretend to be trans women and competing in women's basketball.
It was released on December 1, 2023 on the streaming service DailyWire+.
"Winners are just tropers who win":
- Artistic License – Sports: Men can't just put on a wig, say they're trans, and compete in women's sports no questions asked in Real Life. That sort of thing is put under intense scrutiny and the entire team would have gone through a vetting process that would have shot their plan dead on arrival. This is especially egregious because
the film was originally going to be a documentary where they would have an actor pretend to be trans and catalog their rise to fame, but it didn't work for those very reasons. - Black Comedy: The entire film is an edgy spoof of the debate on transgender people competing in female sports.
- Dragged into Drag: The film's protagonists are mediocre male basketball players who dress in drag and pretend to be transwomen so that they can play in women's basketball and dominate.
- Foreshadowing: In the opening prologue, a young Coach Rob says to his team "You're playing like girls out there", hinting as to what the team do later in the film.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While he still goes along with the plan, David Cone rightfully points out that the team is pretending to be trans women to use their "innate strength" to essentially beat up women because they weren't good enough to go up against other men, making them come across as a bunch of bullies. His teammates respond by silently mocking him for being a bleeding heart.
- Men Are Better Than Women: The movie posits that the titular Ballers — a bunch of men who had only just gotten back into sports, are past their prime, and had peaked in high school — can beat any pro-athlete woman in sports effortlessly and that the only ones who could beat them are a team of black men who are doing the same scam as they are. While Rob tries to reassure his daughter that girls are better at some things than boys (like being empathetic and civilized and other non-athletic things), they are all Informed Attributes.
- Mistaken for Gay: Or Mistaken for Trans in this case. As Rob gets turned down from joining the competition as the men's events are all full, Alex, wearing a wig, gets mistaken by the receptionist for a trans woman and she enters Alex into the women's tournament.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The movie is inspired by the culture war in the 2020s over whether or not trans athletes should be allowed to compete against other women.
- Rousing Speech: The opening prologue has Rob giving an inspirational speech to his team, ending with the saying: "Winners are just losers who win".
- Slapstick: Much of the movie is composed of physical comedy especially during the basketball scenes, with either the main characters or the people they compete with getting hurt in humorous ways. Even outside of the sports scenes, there's plenty of this, like when Rob gets tased by a receptionist and then comedically hits his head on the desk.
- Strawman Political: Anything to the left of the Daily Wire's political views is portrayed as a mocking stereotype. Character examples include the woman seen in the trailer dressed in pro-LGBTQ paraphernalia with a taser, and Matt Walsh's hippie character. A systemic example is the "woke" school attended by Coach Rob's daughter, which teaches her extensively about gender theory while leaving out actual history.
