USA Table Tennis Goes to the Movies!
By Larry Hodges

Table Tennis isn’t exactly known as a TV sport, but many people do not realize there really are some movies and TV shows that feature table tennis. Many are available at your local video store. What follows are reviews of some of the more "classic" showings of table tennis in movies. (Next issue: TV.) I put the list together by posting notes on the Internet newsgroups rec.sport.table-tennis and alt.movies, plus ones I’d seen or heard about over the years.

All shows that I have seen are graded from one to five paddles for amount of table tennis, quality of table tennis, and quality of the movie in general.

Forrest Gump (1994)
Director: Robert Zemeckis; 142 minutes

Does this movie really need to be explained? Is there anyone who hasn’t seen it? Hanks stars as a simple-minded but well-meaning man who leads a charmed life as he teaches Elvis Presley to dance, becomes a football star, meets John F. Kennedy, serves with honors in Vietnam, meets Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, speaks at an anti-war rally at the Washington Monument, hangs out with the Yippies, discovers the break-in at the Watergate, opens a profitable shrimping business, becomes an original investor in Apple Computers, and runs back and forth across the country for several years. However, it is his table tennis exploits that interest us.

Forrest becomes an international table tennis star on the U.S. team that tours China in 1971. The rallies are not particularly realistic, but are spectacular to watch. To create them, Hanks simply did the motions (and he has really awkward strokes), and the ball was added by computer afterwards. You can also rent the video "Through the Eyes of Forrest Gump," which is about the making of the movie, including the table tennis scenes.

Table Tennis Quantity: 4 paddles

Table Tennis Quality: 4 paddles

Movie Quality: 5 paddles

You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939)
Directors: George Marshall, Edward F. Cline; 79 minutes

In this movie, W.C. Fields stars as a crooked circus manager. There is no table tennis until near the very end, but then there’s a 3-4 minute sequence that is one of the funniest I’ve ever seen.

Fields is already causing turmoil at a party when he walks into a room with a ping pong table. He picks up a paddle, and says in his nasal voice, "What’s this, a beaver tail?" He then puts the paddle down and has a conversation for a few minutes with someone else. He then walks back to the table, picks up a paddle, and begins to play a guest.

Throughout the sequence (and it’s all one single rally, apparently), Fields is trash-talking and yelling one-liners. The sequence begins with Fields intentionally returning the first shot with the edge of his racket (a nifty trick). Then, the two rally like typical ping-pong players, i.e. slowly. Then the camera speeds up, and the rally becomes very fast, as does the side-to-side turning of the many onlooker’s heads. A ball goes into a woman’s mouth; Fields smacks her in the back, the ball pops out onto the table, the rally continues. Then the two begin blasting the ball back and forth as the camera pans in on each of them. If you watch closely, you can tell that their shots aren’t going anywhere near the table, but the effect is that they are making one incredible shot after another from all parts of the room. Then the ball flies out the window, and lands on a water fountain, balancing on the top of the water spout; no problem, as Fields races outside, and smacks the back in through the window, and races back in; the rally continues. The ball gets stuck in the updraft of a fan; Fields smacks it back into play, and the rally continues. Fields finally wins the point by smacking the ball and knocking down his opponent.

Side note: this is the movie where Fields mutters the immortal line, "Somebody’s taken the cork out of my lunch." The movie also features the ventriloquist act of Edgar Bergen with Charlie McCarthy.

Table Tennis Quantity: 2 paddles

Table Tennis Quality: 5 paddles

Movie Quality: 3.5 paddles

Nice Girls Don’t Explode (1987)
Director: Chuck Martinez; 92 minutes

The premise of the movie is simple: the hero is a ping-pong star, and his girl friend’s mother will do anything to make sure her daughter doesn’t go out with … a ping-pong player! In other words, there is nothing lower than a ping-pong player! Whenever our hero meets with his girl friend, fires break out, explosions go off, and you think it must be supernatural. (Spoiler’s alert – plot about to be given away!) Actually, the girl’s mother has rigged the entire region. She is spying on the two, and whenever they get together, she sets the fireworks off by remote control. In the end, things work out, and the mom agrees to their marriage.

At the start of the movie, there are scenes showing the hero winning trophies, and there’s a scene where he rallies with a Popsicle. At the very end, he’s playing in the final of the Chinese Open. His new mother-in-law drops a cookie, which falls onto the court. The hero slips on it during a rally, and makes a desperate return of a shot which arcs through the air and lands on the net, where it balances precariously for several seconds before falling over and winning the Championship for him!

Table Tennis Quantity: 1.5 paddles

Table Tennis Quality: 2.5 paddles

Movie Quality: 3 paddles

A Great Wall (1986)
Director: Peter Wang; 103 minutes

This is one of the few movies that takes table tennis seriously. A Chinese man living in San Francisco decides to take his family back to China. His son, a high school football star, joins the local youth table tennis team, and becomes their best player. In the final of the local youth championships, he is up 2-0 and 18-13, but loses deuce in the fifth.

Throughout the movie there are recurring scenes of serious table tennis training going on, including a spectacular sequence of kindergarten kids in training. (We can only hope this was the Chinese Kindergarten Champions, and not just a typical group!) You see the Chinese coach working with players at various times throughout the movie. However, the main two players in the movie, the football star and his rival, are obviously both actors, and to the educated eye, they are made to look "good" by top players either hitting or lobbing the ball right to them, or (in many cases) feeding multiball. In the youth final, many of the nicer rallies are obviously done by a coach feeding multiball – look closely, and you’ll see the ball doesn’t always come back from where it was hit to. There’s also a shot where one player smashes cleanly off the end, but the rally continues in one continuous sequence – a coach is obviously feeding multiball. There’s also a small problem in that it’s obvious that other players in the training session are better than our two "stars" – but they’re the stars, so they are in the final!

The movie is about 2/3 in Chinese with English subtitles. The rest is in English.

Table Tennis Quantity: 2 paddles

Table Tennis Quality: 4 paddles

Movie Quality: 3.5 paddles

Ping Pong Bath Station (1998)
Director: Gen Yamakawa; 110 minutes

Shortly before we went to press, I saw a brochure for an upcoming film festival. It rather grabbed my eye because there was a picture of a woman playing penholder about to serve next to a description of this movie! It is in Japanese, but English subtitled. I haven’t seen the movie, but their description begins as follows: "To the ranks of great sports comedies can be added this serene crowd-pleaser about the inspirational power of table tennis to overcome ennui and adversity." It apparently is about a 42-year-old Japanese housewife with a husband and son who abandons them to become a table tennis player.

Stairway to Heaven (1946)
Previously titled A Matter of Life and Death
Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; 115 minutes

There is one rather interesting table tennis scene in this movie. An English pilot is about to crash in World War II, and he has no parachute. He talks to and falls in love with a girl on the radio. He tells her his situation, they say goodbye, and he jumps out of the plane rather than burn up in a crash. He wakes up unharmed, thinking mistakenly he’s in heaven. It turns out he’s the first "mistake" by the afterworld in over 1000 years – the "angel" that was supposed to lead him to the afterlife (a hilarious Frenchman) missed him during his fall, and so he survived. A series of scenes follow where the angel tries convince him to follow him to the afterlife – with time stopping for everyone else while they talk. Because he has now met and really fallen in love with the girl he met on the radio, he refuses.

In one scene, the pilot is sleeping at his doctor’s house, and his doctor and the girl he’s in love with are playing table tennis while discussing his case. (They’re just basement players, but pretty good rallies.) They stop playing, and talk for a while, then go back to playing. The angel comes to visit, and the game freezes with the ball in mid-air, and the doctor in mid-stroke. The really hilarious thing is that when the pilot goes over to them, they are both frozen in a different position than when they had been in before! Oops! After a while, the angel goes away, and the table tennis game continues as if nothing had happened. In the end, there is a trial in the afterlife, and the pilot wins the case, and is allowed to continue living. According to Blockbuster Entertainment, the movie is a 5-star movie. I agree.

Table Tennis Quantity: 1.5 paddles

Table Tennis Quality: 3.5 paddles (because of frozen ball in air effect)

Movie Quality: 5 paddles

Ping Pong (1987)
Director: Po Chih Leong

I was not able to find out much about this movie. Law student Elaine Choi becomes a "Ping Pong Diplomat," bouncing between modern family relationships and traditional Chinese customs, in an effort to discover the secrets of Sam Wong’s enigmatic will.

The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (1999)
Director: Gary Halvorson; 77 minutes

One of the characters is entertaining the main antagonist by playing table tennis. The character is Bug the bug, who plays by hitting the ball, and running around the table to hit the ball back. (Information contributed by Kevin Walton.)

Blood, Sweat & Tears: Ol Dragon in Danger (1996)
Director: Mitsuhiro Mihara

I couldn’t find this movie, and am not sure if it has English subtitles or not (it’s in Japanese). A woman in an arranged marriage falls in love with a rich handsome man at first sight, who likes table tennis. She comes to compete with her rival in every respect since they were children by playing table tennis to obtain the "prince on the white horse."

Inventing The Abbotts (1997)
Director: Pat O’Connor; 106 minutes

This movie is set in the 1950s. Two brothers who don’t get along very well periodically play table tennis in their attic. There’s also an interesting scene in a soda shop where, during a conversation, you can see a ping pong paddle hanging on the wall, and a ping pong ball sitting on the counter.

Table Tennis Quantity: 1 paddles

Table Tennis Quality: 1 paddles

Movie Quality: 3 paddles

There are a couple of table tennis scenes in this British prison film from the 1970s, but I was unable to find out much about it.

While searching for table tennis movies, I experienced a bizarre coincidence. Potomac Video is one of the largest local video stores, and I went with a list of table tennis movies to search for. The movie I was looking for wasn’t on the shelf, so I was about to go to another section to look for another movie when I overheard a man saying, "There must be a W.C. Fields section." Since I too was looking for a W.C. Fields movie, I asked the man what he was looking for. He said, "I’m looking for ‘You Can’t Cheat An Honest Man.’ I want my son to see this crazy ping-pong scene in it." It was exactly the movie I had been looking for!

Both of us gave up on finding the movie, since it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Later on, I came back to look one more time, and found it out of order.

NEXT ISSUE: USA Table Tennis Magazine explores Table Tennis on TV. If you know of a TV show that featured table tennis, let us know! Current list includes episodes of The Gary Shandling Show, Get Smart, The Odd Couple, Everyone Loves Raymond, and Sesame Street. (The only one I’ve actually seen is the Shandling Show, so if you want to send in a short description of any of these, send it in!)