Ping Pong (2002) is a great movie. I love ping pong or Table Tennis and used to play all the time; however, not at the level that you will see in the movie.Yutaka Hoshino / Peco (played by Yôsuke Kubozuka) and Makoto Tsukimoto / Smile (played by Arata) are team mates on a, Japanese High School equivalent, team, which is much more than the club sport that my high school had. Instead, I lettered in regular tennis.

Anyway, the movie revolves around Peco and Smile. Peco is the loud obnoxious one that does not try and believes that the world should bow before this mastery of the sport. However, he is badly beaten. Smile is a good guy that does not love ping pong, but has exceptional talent. Smile would rather loose than make his appoint feel bad about loosing.

As in any sports movie, there are the bad guys. The athletes that shame others, get all the glory, and are down right mean. Peco and Smile with the help of their coaches find the inner strength to succeed.

This is must see for any ping pong fan. Also, knowing the network TV stations and how they like to cover the Summer Olympics, this will be the closest thing that I will get to professional or semi- professional table tennis.

The Soulless Machine