FIST FIGHT (Richie Keen). 91 minutes. Opens Friday (February 17). See listing. Rating NNNN
Okay, so Fist Fight is a very silly movie where all the grown-ups act like idiots and everyone’s on drugs or saying grotesquely raunchy things (or both).
A clever reworking of the 80s high-school chestnut Three O’Clock High – with the twist being that both the nerdy hero and the hothead who challenges him to an after-school throwdown are both teachers – it’s weightless but occasionally inspired. I like everybody in it, and I laughed an awful lot. In the middle of February, that’s enough.
Fist Fight tracks a miserable day in the life of high-school English teacher Andy Campbell (Charlie Day) whose wishy-washiness gets him on the wrong side of perpetually pissed-off history teacher Strickland (Ice Cube), thus setting up the showdown.
Andy tries to get out of the fight, but the universe conspires against his every move screenwriters Van Robichaux and Evan Susser, working from a story they wrote with New Girl and Veronica Mars actor Max Greenfield, delight in giving Andy increasingly desperate escape strategies and immediately puncturing them, while deftly layering in small gags with big payoffs.
The whole thing hangs on Day’s performance, and the wild card of the cult sitcom It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia and the Horrible Bosses movies is up for anything. He starts out with his signature nervous jabbering and quickly finds a gear or two beyond it, spinning out into new levels of panicked shrieking and frantic physicality. Cube’s slow-burn fury gets funnier and funnier by virtue of existing in the same frame: it’s like watching a massive oak refuse to bend in a whirlwind.
The stars are supported by an enthusiastic cast of comedians including 30 Rock’s Tracy Morgan, 22 Jump Street’s Jillian Bell and Silicon Valley’s Kumail Nanjiani, with Breaking Bad’s Dean Norris and Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks turning up as ringers. Every cast member gets at least one big laugh – Nanjiani’s is so weirdly great they repeat it a handful of times in the closing bloopers – and the whole thing is over before it has a chance to get old.
Points for excellent use of a Big Sean song, too.
