Dodgeball is a completely unknown game in Britian but Ben Stiller, his wife Christine Taylor and best friend Vince Vaughn are turning being hit with a ball into a hit at the box office. Steve Pratt reports.

AMERICAN actors Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn seem destined to be on opposite sides in movies. Friends in real life, they get cast as antagonists in movies. Most recently, Vaughn was the bad guy in the transfer of Starsky And Hutch to the big screen, with Stiller on the side of law and order. Again in the comedy sports picture Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, the pair are at odds with one another.

Vaughn runs a rundown gym called Average Joe's that fitness freak White Goodman (that's Stiller) wants to take over. The pair settle the matter at the all-important Dodgeball championships.

"I've been a big fan of Ben's for a long time," says Vaughn, who made his name alongside Jon Favreau in the 1996 movie Swingers in which they played a pair of losers in life and love.

"We did a short together for MTV and Starsky And Hutch, but Dodgeball was the first time we were able to do a movie and have scenes together."

Stiller, who's also been seen in Along Came Polly this year, adds: "I've wanted to work with Vince since Swingers, and we've known each other from then."

He also has a close relationship with another of his Dodgeball co-stars, Christine Taylor. They're married in real life. In the movie, they're on opposite sides, dodging the balls in many a game. Stiller got so carried away - well, actually, his aim was lousy - that during one rehearsal he smacked his wife in the face with a dodgeball. "He threw the ball as hard as he could, and I saw it hurtling toward me. But he has no aim, and the ball hit me hard in the face. He felt really bad about it, but the only serious damage done was to my ego," says Taylor.

Playing dodgeball mean getting fit. For her, it was her first film since having their daughter Ella 18 months ago. "A dodge ball game lasts about five minutes in real life, it's not a long game because there's only six players on each side," she explains.

"People are pretty aggressive attacking you so it's exhausting because you're not just doing one motion. You're stopping, throwing, taking hits. I kept saying, 'Guys take it easy, I've just had a baby'.

"I thought it was going to be so much easier because I remember playing dodgeball when I was ten and we had a lot more energy. I am not a huge gym buff."

Husband Ben took playing mullet-sporting, moustachioed, egomaniacal White Goodman very seriously and looks remarkably buff on screen. "It's wearing spandex leotards - they're unforgiving. I had to work out," he explains. "But he's such a ridiculous character. He's so obsessed with himself, he has issues with his body and weight. I had to get into shape."

The look, Taylor reveals, was modelled on Patrick Swayze's in Road House. "White is just so out of touch and delusional. I don't see any aspects of Ben there," she says.

"I knew it was Ben but it was such a transformation. He has such commitment to playing this crazy guy. It made me laugh all the time. I feel I came off this as the most unprofessional actress for laughing."

Vaughn - who starred in another sports film, British bowls comedy Blackball - found it easier to play Average Joe proprietor Peter La Fleur, whose motto is "failure is an option".

Vaughn has never been "a big workout person, so there's a similarity". But the actor does have a reputation of being cool in a Dean Martin sort of relaxed way, although he doesn't necessarily agree. "Even in the beginning with Swingers I felt there was a sense of innocence in that movie. These guys were not that cool - and they were based on Jon and me - going through a break-up, getting their confidence and going back out there.

"We were surprised those characters were seen as cool. For instance, there's a scene where I think a girl is hitting on me and she's actually talking to a child. There's a geekiness to it."

Dodgeball has been an unexpectedly big hit in the US. Stiller doesn't see the point in worrying if the movie will travel overseas. It wasn't so much the comedy as foreign audiences not knowing the sport of dodge ball that concerned him.

"It's an American thing in terms of the name. But the movie's the story of the underdog and it's a sports movie," he says. "I don't think you know if anything is going to translate anywhere. It's hard to think about the world, you are just thinking about the movie.

"We did the movie because we liked the script. Everybody just wanted to do it to have fun. We were all there because we wanted to be there. We did a read-through before we started the movie and that was so much fun and the motivation to go ahead. We were going on a gut feeling that this was going to be a great experience."

Vaughn learnt a painful lesson from filming: "That not exercising for a long period of time and then running and stopping a lot without stretching is a bad idea."

Unlike Stiller, who didn't play any sports at school, he appears to have been an excellent sportsman. He was, he admits casually, good enough to make the team. "I liked playing American football. I wrestled too, but at a certain point that was not interesting any more."

* Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (12A) opens in cinemas on August 27th

Published: 26/08/2004