YMMV / Lady Ballers

• Anvilicious: The film repeatedly and bluntly reinforces the idea that trans women are not "real women" and don't belong in women's spaces.
• Ass Pull: Kris being revealed to have been Matt Walsh As Himself all along was completely out of left field and has no build up. However, the sheer ridiculousness of it actually made it one of the funniest scenes in movie.
• Bile Fascination: The movie proudly markets itself as "the most triggering comedy of the year", and multiple trans-supporting video essayists have checked out and fully reviewed the film to see how bad and how offensive it really is. Aside from the Daily Wire's target audience, most of the interest in Lady Ballers has come from people expecting the worst who fundamentally oppose the film's message, many of whom found that the film isn't "triggering" but unfunny, uninspired, and trying too hard to be offensive.
• Broken Aesop:
  • The movie's message is that trans athletes are a threat to the sanctity of women's sports. This is despite the repeated dunks on women's sports as being lesser than "real" (read: Cis Men's) sports and inherently deserving of less respect.
    Cody Johnston: [...]and as I mentioned before, this film doesn't seem to have a single women's basketball player represented as a character, and actually seems to hate the WNBA. They have repeated jokes from like 20 years ago about how nobody watches women's basketball, and the other players are mainly portrayed as pouty props. Their starting premise is that any man could beat any woman at any sport. It has no respect for, or interest in, the thing it's claiming to defend and protect, to the point that it seems ignorant and hostile to it. And that's just so weird to do when the thing you're trying to say is that this is all about preserving the dignity of women's sports.
  • A related message of the movie is that women in general have it easier than men and get effusive praise for not accomplishing anything. This is explicitly stated when a character refers to a major part of being a woman is to "tell each other how brave you are for things that require absolutely no physical courage." This is contradicted by the fact the movie opens with a Rousing Speech from the main character to his team, calling them brave for daring to play a game they were already going to play.
• Cliché Storm: Aside from its core premise of punching down towards transgender people, the film plays out like any typical 2000s sports comedy centered around Putting the Band Back Together, with many story beats that have been done very similarly in those movies.
• Critical Dissonance: Critics have slammed and dismissed the film for being a cliché and generic sports comedy on top of accusing it of being extremely preachy. Audiences meanwhile, usually ones who agree with the film's conservative message or simply apolitical and centrist viewers, have generally given the film positive ratings and consider it an entertaining enough comedy flick.
• Designated Hero: The protagonist Rob is a firm believer in Second Place Is for Losers and decries that he isn't allowed to be a Jerkass to the kids he is supposed to be coaching (the movie opening with him getting fired for it), is a massive sexist, doesn't believe trans women are real women (which makes his scheme of having his cis-gendered men play in women's sports for easy victories especially unethical in many ways), and blames all of his problems on everyone else being too woke. The only moment of self-reflection, or anything close to having a character arc, he has is when he decides to quit the finals so that he can be with his wife, sacrificing his chance at being a winner for the sake of their marriage... when his team was already losing against a team of men doing the same scam as them. Considering he was written to be the mouthpiece of the filmmaker's political beliefs, we're supposed to agree with him every step of the way.
• Funny Moments:
  • Rob gets tazed by the receptionist and slams the side of his head on the table. It's considered to be the film's most impressive bit of slapstick.
  • Kris revealing himself to be Matt Walsh in disguise is pretty dang ridiculous and comes out of nowhere. Made even better by Walsh's Evil Laugh and Candace Owens' confused reaction.
• Memetic Mutation: One Joke: The Movie^ExplanationAmong those who dislike conservative humor, a common meme is the idea that it only consists of one joke, namely the "I identify as X" canard used to mock transgender people (i.e. "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter"). Thus, it's become common to semi-ironically claim that Lady Ballers is merely that singular joke stretched out into a feature film. The meme isn't exclusive to left-wingers either, as even some conservative viewers who otherwise find the premise and general joke somewhat funny find that it gets old after being dragged out and for over an hour.
• Offending the Creator's Own: Some right-wing viewers, the film's target audience, agree with the film's message but find the movie itself poorly paced, badly acted, and too mediocre in its writing to actually be enjoyable. Even if they think the premise could be funny, they find that it gets extremely old fast as the film essentially stretches one joke into an hour long movie.
• Older Than They Think: The Daily Wire's film division repeatedly talks about how it's making movies that Hollywood wouldn't dare make, seemingly unaware that movies about male ringers joining female sports teams have already been made (such as Ladybugs and Juwanna Mann) without any controversy.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: It takes about 1 hour into a nearly 2 hour film for the story to actually get to the heavily advertised premise of the titular Lady Ballers competing in women's basketball. With most of that time, besides characterizing the team's members, being filled with potshots at Strawman Political targets the Daily Wire hates, Rob's sex life, and weirdest of all, commercials for Jeremy Boreing's real life licensed products.
• Tainted by the Preview: The trailer drew controversy for being produced by the Daily Wire, a highly controversial news company. Aside from its transphobic premise, many viewers also pointed out racist jokes in the trailer and found that it seemed to run on (ineffective) shock value rather than humor.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Matt Walsh's and Brett Cooper's non-diegetic wigs (meant to represent actual hair) are of poor quality and almost as fake-looking as the cross-dressing men's diegetic wigs. However, the first one is justified by Walsh's character being an in-universe disguise in the first place. Michael Knowles also has a very fake-looking mustache.

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