Female Fight Club fails to fire
Chick Fight (16, 93 mins) Directed by Paul Leyden Reviewed by James Croot ★★
It’s sad to see the talented malin Akerman stuck slumming it in this dire, direct-to-streaming-services action-comedy. A decade ago, the Swedish-born, Canadian-raised actor was the toast of Hollywood, with terrific turns in The Heartbreak Kid, 27 Dresses, Watchmen and The Proposal.
Then television beckoned, something of amixed bag between the short-lived success of Trophy Wife and false starts like Sin City Saints.
And as her scene-stealing role as Lara Axelrod slowly got smaller, as Billions’ seasons progressed, so too seemingly did Akerman’s time in the spotlight.
It’s easy to see what attracted her to this project. A chance to headline, an opportunity to combine her strengths of physicality and comedic timing and, you know, it’s a female Fight Club!
Unfortunately, Aussie director and former soap star Paul Leyden and first-timewriter Joseph Downey’s tale is filled with few genuine laughs, a ploddingly predictable plot and tonally is truly all over the shop. Saccharine sentiment and potentially emotional familial drama sit uneasily alongside lashings of sexual innuendo and extended pummellings.
It’s a story that seemingly desperately wants to be a bigscreen version of Netflix’s Glow, but instead feels like a bad cocktail of Whip It and Fighting Withmy Family.
Akerman plays Anna Wyncomb, awoman clearly struggling with life. We know this instantly because she emerges from her bed wearing mismatched socks to a toilet without paper and walls so thin she can hear her neighbours having noisy sex.
Her car is repossessed and she’s struggling to generate enough business at her cafe to pay the bills. It’s no wonder she’s in a funk – especially when she considers herself to be failing her late mother’s memory.
It doesn’t help that her father has moved on, Anna only just discovering his ‘‘sexual fluidity’’. And as she reels from that surprise, her business burns down.
Uninsured, she’s about ready to throw in the towel on her life, when best friend – and cop – Charleen (Dulce Sloan) introduces her to an underground ‘‘shelter’’ where women can shake off the ‘‘pressure cooker of life’’ without societal judgment. In other words, beat the crap out of other woman in front of an all-female crowd baying for blood.
Initially reluctant to take part, naturally, it isn’t long before Anna manages to make enough enemies to find herself forced into the ring.
What follows is a bizarremix of bloody battles, verbal sparring with Bella Thorne’s onedimensional baddie and gags involving watermelon punching and coconuts to the crotch you’d more typically expect in an Adam Sandler movie.
Sloan’s Charleen performs straight out of thewanda Sykes/ Tiffany Haddish sassy and oversharing best friend playbook, and Alec Baldwin turns up occasionally on what seems like an entirely different beachfront set to attempt to espouse boxing wisdom and deliberately awful lipsynching.
Amovie that even announces that it’s ‘‘the wrong time for a period joke’’ (having just delivered one), admits it can’t use a classic catchphrase for copyright reasons (fighters are urged to ‘‘let’s get prepared to rumble’’) and climaxes in a headbutting frenzy, this is a film atwar with itself and the losers are the audience.
Chick Fight is available to rent from Neon, itunes, Youtube and Google Play.