Ecki (Maximilian Brückner) is a keen soccer player, a local champion since childhood. He's grown into a star goalkeeper, but during an important game, where his team needs a win to move up into the regional league, he fudges an easy save and cops the anger of his teammates. Drunk at the post-game party Ecki starts kissing another guy, and straight away his secret's out. Ecki leaves town, determined to return only when he's corralled an all-gay soccer team that can beat his old team at their own game. He heads to Dortmund, where his sister (Lisa Maria Potthoff) and countless gays live, while his despondent father (Dietmar Bär) - the local baker - suffers the humiliation of having a gay son.

This is a particularly humdrum episode in the ongoing gays-in-sports genre, the international spitoon that holds The Iron Ladies and The Iron Ladies 2 (volleyball, Thailand), Summerstorm (rowing, Germany), and Eleven Men Out (soccer, Iceland).

Though popular with gay audiences (Balls won the audience favorite award at LA's Outfest, 2004) such films contain a trite and somewhat anti-gay message. That is, before you can play with the men, you have to prove your manhood. If you suffer enough and prove your manhood excessively and conspicuously you can even get away with being gay, as long as that doesn't inhibit your masculinity.

As Ecki recruits his new team, he weeds out the femme from the butch. Porcine leather men who ride Harleys are welcome on the team, even though they can't kick a ball. Theatrical types that try out for the team win everyone's raised eyebrows and low expectations - only when they show off unexpected ball handling skills are they accepted as supporting players who have little time on the field and on the screen. A gay Turkish immigrant is allowed his flamboyance: it's part of his wierd repetoire of foreign exotica (belly dancing music plays every time he appears). Meanwhile, Ecki nurtures a heavy crush for a handsome and manly male nurse, who all the girls think is straight.

Balls strikes many other fouls, especially with its perfunctory soundtrack of amorphous jangly rock tunes which overlay every second scene. As a sports film, it's notably un-sporty, with not a single memorable game scene in the film. Even the climactic soccer match is made up mostly of shots of the hovering spectators, close ups of various players, and the odd incongruous cut to a kebab stand.

Ecki's sister is given a smidge of character development - showing her romantic frustrations when she laments how all the best men are gay. She proves to be the lucky one as ther characters, including Ecki, remain cyphers. The film's endless self-fascination with the "novelty" of its storyline has resulted in virtually every area being neglected. Films like The Full Monty or Bend It Like Beckham have demonstrated that it's possible to make intelligent and touching films out of sporting competition material. Chariots of Fire wasn't bad either.

It seems that once Balls' brand of shrill and corrosive gay politik is stuck into everything, everything deflates.

Review by Mark Adnum