FIST FIGHT (MA15+)
Director: Richie Keen (feature debut) Starring: Charlie Day, Ice Cube, Tracy Morgan, Jillian Bell, Christina Hendricks, Kumail Nanjiani. Rating: *1/2
MANY a movie set at school carries the same basic scenario as Fist Fight.
A bully takes issue with a wimp, nerd or sensitive type. A same-day showdown is scheduled. Word spreads like wildfire there’s gonna be blood spilled behind the bike sheds after 3pm.
The victim-to-be spends the rest of the day in meltdown mode: unable to either wriggle out of it, or make a run for it.
In what turns out to the only bright idea in a dim movie comedy, Fist Fight whacks a new twist on the old formula.
What if it were two teachers putting their dooks up for a punch-up?
The answer that Fist Fight comes up with is as unedifying as it is uneducational. As for funny, well, you had better set your entertainment bar very low to draw any lasting laughter from this duff spectacle.
How low? In terms of recent lamentable comedies — of which there have been too many — look for a spot higher than Bad Santa 2, but well beneath Office Christmas Party. The plotting of Fist Fight is so bare-bones it borders on skeletal.
Low-ranking lit teacher Andy Campbell (Charlie Day) is the kind of whiny doormat people will walk over without a second thought.
So when Andy causes a deranged, angermismanaged colleague named Mr Strickland (Ice Cube and his perma-scowl) to lose his job, no-one really cares that Andy will be proudly beaten to a pulp by Mr S.
To be fair, the much-mooted scholastic smackdown — when it finally arrives — is a doozy. Particularly if you dig those prowrestling bouts where ‘foreign objects’ suddenly appear in the squared circle.
But to get that far, your sense of humour will have to endure a senseless beating from some seriously skeezy scripting.
The repeated jokes about sketchy support players are the worst. A methed-up teacher (Jillian Bell) who wants to have sex with her students. A messed-up teacher (Tracy Morgan) who wants to have sex with his students’ parents. Christina Hendricks threatening to stab students and parents alike.
It’s enough to make you challenge yourself to a fight outside in the car park when this dismal affair is over.