Fist Fight

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Fist Fight

As reported by Dollyforme

               

The very lovely Christina Hendricks (in 2010, she was voted “Best Looking American Woman” by Esquire magazine) stars in this very bad but also very funny comedy about teachers who go along with all the insults and dick doodles in part because they are  weaklings but also because they know that firings are afoot.

 

Meanwhile, aggro, scowling history teacher Ron Strickland (Ice Cube) — "the scariest motherfucker in the school" — has a different approach, relying on intimidation and brutality to get through.

 

These opposite approaches to life and work come to a head when, via an intricate series of events, one teacher winds up snitching out Mr. Strickland to the school principal for taking an axe to a misbehaving student’s desk. That inspires the latter to challenge the former to a fight in the parking lot. Soon #teacherfight is trending among the student body, and everybody’s confidently declaring that Mr. Campbell will be dead by sundown. (The plot feels like somebody decided to weld together two underseen Eighties high school comedies, Three O’Clock High and Teachers.)

 

Fearing for his life, and also concerned about making his daughter’s performance in a talent show that afternoon, one teacher, Mr. Campbell tries to find a way out of his predicament. Among his solutions: pinning drugs on Mr. Strickland so as to get him arrested and, later, after they both land in jail, convincing a giant behemoth of an inmate to take the tough-guy history teacher out.

 

This is not a nice movie, and while its devil-may-care nastiness is occasionally bracing, it’s just as often frustrating. Mr. Campbell’s escalating duplicity does occasionally temper the film’s inadvertently queasy politics, which place us firmly in the perspective of a white teacher with an inner life being terrorized by a black teacher who seems like a sneering, shouting, relentless killing machine. The filmmakers occasionally pick at Campbell’s assumptions, as when he tries to frame Strickland with a small bag of molly and seems to think that the cops will automatically know whom to arrest.

 

But the discomfort merely hangs there, unresolved and uncertain. I also wish the script had done more with the suggestion that the school administration is welcoming the fight for serving to distract everyone from the fact that they’re firing people left and right. Fist Fight purports to be transgressive in its humor, but it plays things safe when it comes to anything resembling social critique. But then again, it’s not that kind of comedy.

 

Still, Ice Cube and Charlie Day have fun with their parts: Day has a gift for slapstick, and watching him anxiously sprint and bounce through the hallways, hiding in lockers and sneaking around bathrooms, makes for an effective contrast to Cube’s persistent rage. And it’s somehow to the film’s credit that the fight, when it does come, is an honest-to-god knockdown, drag-out affair complete with biting, choking, body-slamming, head-stomping, shattered windshields and several fire hydrant blows to the face. All that negative energy has to go somewhere.

 

Fist Fight isn’t there to make you think, but to make you laugh, and it mostly does. It’s a relief to find a major comedy these days that doesn’t seem to rely on epic ad-lib sessions that have been edited down and strung together; scenes here have shape and concision. Extra credit goes to the supporting cast, including Tracy Morgan as a hapless coach and Jillian Bell as the horny, strung-out guidance counselor, both of whom get some of the movie’s biggest laughs. Thanks to that cast, and some savvy direction, you might very well enjoy Fist Fight. But don’t be surprised if it also leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

 

Overall, I liked this movie, the movie was a delight to watch and I loved seeing Christina Hendricks in it – very yummy!

Comments

Thank you dollyforme, I´ll take a look and have a laugh, and a close look on Christina Hendricks. smiley Chris