Last night marked the debut of Lady Ballers, a new Daily Wire comedy that spoofs the “transgender” madness destroying women’s sports. I watched it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Having said that, it’s not a comedy for everyone. Inevitably, leftists will hate it, and engaged conservatives will enjoy it as I did. I’d love to see more movies like this—perhaps a little more polished and subtle—to target non-political Americans.

The trailer for the movie pretty much tells the story: A basketball coach whose life is in disarray gets the old-school team together for a last shot at glory. The twist, of course, is that these weird, broken-down guys can’t compete as men. As women, however, they’re unbeatable. Aided by a journalist who sees a women’s basketball team as the way to media fame, they begin to make their mark on the women’s sports world:

The movie needs to be reviewed at two levels: As a conservative movie and as a movie-movie.

As a conservative movie, it’s great fun. Naturally, its primary target is gender madness, and Lady Ballers does a great job at skewering the insanity driving the whole transgender ideology, especially when it intersects with sports. I liked, as well, that the movie is beautifully vicious about public school education, journalists, and virtue signaling. It also has a short, moving dive into the damage that rampant divorce does to a society.

All these messages are folded into an amusing package. Lastly, the movie has an entirely unexpected and incredibly charming conclusion. It’s worth watching for that alone.

For those of us who spend a lot of time in the conservative blogosphere, Lady Ballers was also fun because of the cameo roles. While I didn’t know the actors behind the basketball players, I recognized many others.

Jeremy Boreing, who is referred to at the Daily Wire as “The God King” and is co-CEO of the Daily Wire, actually got his start as an actor, and he handles the coach’s role very well. I also recognized Matt Walsh as a very touchy-feely leftist, Michael Knowles as a reporter, Ted Cruz as himself, Riley Gaines as herself, and a few other well-known conservative faces.

I’m not the only conservative who liked it. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has over 500 reviews and a 97% approval rating.

So, that’s the movie from a conservative perspective: Lots of fun and it uses humor to score important points. As Ben Shapiro wrote in Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV, the left figured out a long time ago that comedy is a marvelous way to transmit social and political values. Not coincidentally, Shapiro co-founded the Daily Wire and continues there as editor emeritus.

The problem is that, for now, the movie is preaching to the choir. I’m really not sure how well it will play to a broader audience. Leftists, of course, are a lost cause, but I wonder about people like my children and their peers. Would they be able to appreciate Lady Ballers? Would they laugh at seeing journalists skewered, and would a generation raised on LGBTQ+ propaganda think it’s funny to see ostensibly transgender men destroy women (comedically, of course) on the basketball court? Honestly, I don’t know.

As for me, I didn’t like how the movie went out of its way to make the male basketball players weird guys. Two creepy brothers fight incessantly, one guy lives in a cabin with a badger obsession (and I didn’t think the backstory for that was funny), and another guy is implied to be a tech genius but is weird in icky ways.

I don’t mean to denigrate the actors who played these characters. I just thought the characters themselves were unappealing, especially the fighting brothers. Maybe that’s because I’m a gal, not a guy, or maybe it’s because these characters seemed like something written by the high school geeks rather than entertainment professionals.

Of course, the movie’s general quality issues really don’t matter. For the time being, it’s possible only to see it with a Daily Wire subscription, and ordinary Americans aren’t going to pay $74.00 (the current sales price for an annual subscription) to see a movie that’s well-produced and fairly well-acted, but that has a pointed political message and somewhat amateurish writing.

For now, though, I consider the movie a trial run for what conservative entertainment can be. It’s entertaining, almost really good, and it shows enormous potential for future conservative-themed movies that can cross over to a general audience and, using “primetime propaganda,” restore sanity and constitutionalism to America.

One more thing: When I wrote about the movie trailer, I dropped in a plea for getting a subscription to America Thinker. Many of you acted on that, and I can’t tell you how grateful we are.

We know that the advertising that clutters the site is irritating. However, ad revenue dropped dramatically during COVID, so we’ve had to compensate with ever more ads. Moreover, as Elon Musk’s travails show, conservative sites are especially hard hit when it comes to hustling up ad revenue.

If we’re to keep going (and it costs a lot of money to maintain a site such as ours), we have only two revenue sources: ads and subscriptions—and if you get a subscription, you no longer have to see those irritating ads. As an added bonus, you can start leaving comments if you desire.

Image: Lady Ballers poster. Fair use.