Once upon a time, Bobby Dukes was the paintball champion of the world -- or at least the tri-state area. But when he tried to brush off a hit before anyone else could see it -- when he "wiped" -- he lost his title, his girl and everything else.

Ten years later, he's back to for what's his. Not the girl -- she's moved on, and he never liked her that much anyway -- but the title. Bobby Dukes wants to be the paintball champion of the world again.

"Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story" is a mockumentary, by the way; Bobby is played by "The Daily Show's" beetle-browed Rob Corddry, and like him, most of the other cast members have done some work with the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe.

A good deal of the dialogue is improvised, and director Brant Sersen is content to let takes run on while the actors work their way around to the point of the scene, which means that large chunks of the movie play like a summer-stock production of a Christopher Guest film, without the production value, the intellectual elegance or the graceful absurdity.

As charming as Corddry can be, "Blackballed" does have an awful lot of him, and given the relative thinness of the concept, the picture wears out its welcome after about half an hour. (This is the dark side of the digital-video revolution: It's now possible to make a feature for the price of a short film, even when you probably shouldn't.)

This isn't to say the movie doesn't have its moments: Corddry's "Daily Show" comrade Ed Helms turns up for a terrific cameo, and Rob Huebel is hysterical as Bobby's arch-rival, the preening idiot spawn of Will Ferrell and John McEnroe. But there's an awful lot of dead space between them.

Shout! Factory's DVD -- distributed in Canada by Maple Pictures -- loses points for presenting the feature in a 4:3 letterboxed transfer rather than enhancing it for 16:9 televisions. (Canadians should be advised that while Maple's packaging indicates 16:9 enhancement, it doesn't actually have it, offering the same 4:3 master.)

The disc also includes three deleted scenes, an epic outtake reel, and "Bobby Dukes' Video Diary," which is actually a deleted interview sequence with Corddry's Bobby filling in the gaps of his decade-long absence, and sharing some poetry.

Special features include two audio commentaries -- one from director Brant Sersen, co-writer and producer Brian Steinberg and producer Chris Lechler, and a second from Corddry and co-stars Paul Scheer and Rob Riggle. Taken together, they're a goofy and somewhat wistful diary of the long, hard slog of indie-film production, and they almost make up for the absence of any behind-the-scenes footage or documentary on the DVD.

STUDIO: Shout! Factory (US)/Maple Pictures (Canada)
RELEASE DATE: July 25, 2006
RATING: Unrated
PRICE: $19.95
TIME: 91 minutes
DVD EXTRAS: Audio commentaries; deleted scenes; outtakes.
INTERNET SITE: www.blackballedthemovie.com