Review: Fist Fight
Sometimes you watch a movie and think: how did this story get approval and funding from studio executives?
English teacher Andy Campbell (Charlie Day) works at an underfunded high school, trying to survive the last day with his riotous class in before summer vacation. We learn that he's a nice and polite guy, but certainly not invested in the future of his students. It is soon revealed that all teachers are slated to be reviewed due to the shrinking budget. Everyone is a single bad review away from being fired by Principal Tyler (Dean Norris), and Campbell rats on fellow teacher Strickland (Ice Cube) for chopping a student's desk with an axe in a fit of rage.
Strickland, doing the most logical thing teachers do, challenges Campbell to a teacher's fight after school gets out. Because, of course, what other option was there? Having a civilised conversation with each other certainly, doesn't exist in Fist Fight's world. Two men agree to beat each other for no reason than to prove their manhood for all involved: students, peers, families. Is there a larger point being made here? Let me know because I failed to find one in the entire 93 excruciating minutes the movie took to end.
Director Richie Keen, who worked with Day on several It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia TV episodes, offers his lead actor a privilege not granted to the supporting cast: the opportunity to play someone recognisably normal. Everyone else is one-dimensional: Christina Hendricks as a French teacher with large breasts; Tracy Morgan as a coach with an unbeatable losing streak; and Jillian Bell as a wholly inappropriate guidance counsellor who sexually yearns for her students.
Fist Fight's entire plot is insanity of the worst possible kind. It occurs in a world where teachers get away with their creeping deeds on students and parents, carry butterfly knives for fun, and are nothing but utterly cruel, in Cube's case. There is no lesson here, no subtlety, no key takeaway. It is pure drivel and entertainment at its lowest grade. - Thompson Wong
