Balls Up Goes Tits Up

Director: Peter Farrelly 2026

Mark Wahlberg, Paul Walter Hauser, Sacha Baron Cohen 2 Stars

Americans are living in a time where scenes from The Boys, likely the most depraved, violent, apocalyptic comedy series ever made, actually happen in real time.  We’re living in a time where the proud boys have become ICE agents, the release of the horrific Epstein Files have inspired almost zero legal action to date, and the President is so unhinged the question if we’re going to actually survive his presidency feels legitimate. Things couldn’t be less funny and the values that got us there are the values Balls Up mostly celebrates. 

The premise is Elijah (Paul Walter Hauser) the designated OCD nerd, invents a condom that goes over the cock and balls and it’s Brad’s (Mark Wahlberg) job to save the company by selling it as the official condom sponsor of the World Cup in Brazil.  After landing the account, Brad’s terrible judgement to ruin 9 years of sobriety for Senior Santos (Benjamin Bratt), the Brazilian Travel Ministry executive, leads to a series of ever heightening mishaps. 

An R-rated comedy about destroying a man’s sobriety, relentless insults about Latin American culture and poking fun at the death of an endangered animal is giving RFK Jr./Maga horror show vibes that actually need to be shamed to death rather than revived.

There were many scenes in Balls Up that were laugh out loud funny. A vibrating dildo that’s business related in a professional boardroom gave me the church giggles. Molly Shannon is great as the female President of a condom company who can’t be bothered to be appropriate anymore. Because she’s an SNL legend she knows how to take her role lightly.  Benjamin Bratt is the spectacular highlight of the movie. He’s so scorchingly hot as Senior Santos. Sex in R-rated comedy is best when it’s light, silly, pleasurable, flirty, satirical and subversive in the way great sex is. Bratt is in that movie & that’s the movie I wanted to see. Watching a big scene of him swinging butt naked from a vine over a nightclub crowd had the theater audience cheering for joy. More of that please! 

There’s so many much better movies in here. I’m dying for a Nathan For You R-rated sex comedy where Nathan Fielder and Eliah have to save a condom company by trying out different campaigns. Or Elijah gets swept up in a Leaving Las Vegas style bender with Senior Santos. Or please give us The Office set at a 2026 sex toy company. 

Mark Wahlberg comedies only work when he’s partnered with male actors who are masterful at playfully skewering men who take themselves too seriously. He can be charming so the comedies he made with Will Farrell are watchable because Farrell lightens Wahlberg up. Casting the unapologetic Executive Producer of Entourage as the leading man in an R-rated comedy right now was a disastrous choice. 

The all time classic R-rated madcap buddy comedy, The Hangover, works because Bradley Copper’s coldness against Zach Galifianakis’s man-child against the sweetie pies, Ed Helms and Justin Bartha gives the movie so much to work with.  It also explored new territory aligned with the times. At a time when sex work was becoming more socially acceptable Stu (Ed Helms)  acting like a jerk about marrying a sex worker is the joke. Heather Graham is portrayed as the great girl, cool who is just trying to pay the bills and Stu’s friends support a positive view of her.   It makes the comedy fresh for the character who is behind the times to have to catch up. And, in the end, surviving the night in Vegas bonds this ragtag group of friends in ways that make them better, happier people who are kinder to the people who deserve it.

Adam Sandler is the master of the R-rated comedy and he’s evolved with the times. There are characters in his movies who haven’t aged well  but as he’s matured so have his movies. Happy Gilmore 2’s best moments are with Bad Bunny killing it comedically.  And he also now pokes obscene fun at the complexity of a nice guy’s life as a husband and father in movies like The Week Of. 

The Lonely Island crew (Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer) are the current all-time greats in this regard. Clearly worshipping comedy legends like Steve Martin and Martin Short, they took up the mantle of satirizing toxic masculinity. Making it safe to laugh at male behavior that in real life is actually very dangerous is a relief. What’s actually better than the entire Balls Up movie is Andy Samberg's SNL sketch Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals. 

For very poor male behavior to be funny there needs to be real air for it to take flight. Sasha Baron Cohen always reads cold and insensitive in everything he does so him playing Pavio Curto, a Brazilian drug lord, accent and all, is just a stupid kind of cringe. There’s no place to go with it. It’s trying to rehabilitate things that aren’t categorically funny rather than exploring new territory around sex and modern culture. 

The movie ends up being all the assholes at the party that everyone else wishes would just leave. Great comedy is in the delight of revealing hidden truths. If a comedy doesn’t do that at all it falls flat on its face.   Balls Up makes the wrong assumption about what’s been missing in adult comedies. We’re missing raunchy adult sex comedies, not tone deaf rampages. It’s trying to find lightness in American men acting like stupid jerks without any awareness that in real time these guys are killing us.  Watching Balls Up is like being so desperate to get laid you go home with the douchy frat guy but quickly realize you should have chosen the funny sweet guy instead.