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Three best friends decide to start a tetherball league and wind up becoming amateur athletes who have more booze, babes and balls than they can handle.
“Tetherball” is the ultimate underdog story. A group of lifelong friends beat all the odds stacked against them and go on to win the National Tetherball Championship and live happily ever after. Okay, not really but the tetherball aspect of it is true. As an independent filmmaker for over 30 years, I have seen all kinds of movies; big-budget, medium-budget, low-budget and even no-budget and I have to be honest, some of the no and low-budget movies would put some of the major Hollywood blockbusters to shame. “Tetherball” however, does not fall into that category. By all means, it most certainly falls into the low to no-budget category but the fact is that these guys set out to make a movie and all of its faults aside, completed it and managed to self-distribute it and that is half the battle right there.
Three friends work in a dead-end job selling merchandise for a company called Foul Mouth Shirts. After a competitive game of tetherball against some of their co-workers is filmed by a colleague and put on the internet, the video goes viral and they become celebrities. They are drafted by the Tetherball League and proceed to play against their competitors until the team’s leader, Zach (Rick Dawson), gets cold feet with the championship finals right around the corner and backs out. It takes a visit back home and a very candid talk with his father and girlfriend Sara (Kirstie Munoz) to make him realize the mistake he made so he returns to his friends, riles them up again and they prepare for the finals against their toughest opponents yet.
The underdog story has always been a favorite with audiences worldwide, just look at “Rocky,” “Rudy,” “Happy Gilmore” and “The Karate Kid” to name but a few. People have always been taken in by the scrawny little kid who goes up against the giant opponent and beats him, a modern-day David & Goliath. “Tetherball” is really an underdog story but it also gives the filmmakers the opportunity to mimic as many 1980s raunchy comedies as they possibly can, complete with nudity, bar fights and even a few genuinely touching moments. And by touching, I mean kicking each other in the balls. Porn star Ron Jeremy appears intermittently, pretty much playing himself as does “Saved by the Bell” star Dustin Diamond, who actually gets some of the movie’s best laughs but in the end, while the movie won’t win any awards for originality, it’s actually a fun way to spend 90 minutes.
“Tetherball” is available now on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Xbox Live, and Tower Records
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