Directed by: Richie Keen
Starring: Ice Cube, Charlie Day, Jillian Bell, Dean Norris, Tracy Morgan
I suppose I never know if a movie will be a hidden comedy gem until I watch it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Sadly, I understood fairly early on in Fist Fight that there would be nothing to gain from this venture. The plot is similar to Three O'Clock High (1987), a movie most people might not even remember, but it also dealt with a tough bully challenging a meek opponent to a fight after school. In Fist Fight, the participants are teachers, not students, so the movie fails to tap into the adolescent fear of being humiliated and getting the crap kicked out of you in front of your peers. Instead, we have two grown men who should know better, but the movie insists on heading towards its inevitable climax and following Three O'Clock High's playbook. The wimp will try every trick in the book to avoid fighting the bigger, scarier bully, only to man up at the 11th hour and go toe-to-toe with his nemesis. Anyone expecting anything else is watching the wrong movie.
This wouldn't be a bad thing if Fist Fight were funny or if we cared anything about the two guys who are about to pound each other into oblivion. There are a couple of mild chuckles, including Ice Cube's lament that students think the Civil War was between Batman and Superman. If I could think of the other laugh, I could share it with you now and thus you wouldn't need to plunk down your hard-earned money to see this movie. However, there was a lady in the audience who laughed so hard when Day attacked Cube by spraying a fire extinguisher in his face that she had to leave the theater to compose herself. Really?
How did Andy Campbell (Day) and Ron Strickland become after-school opponents? Well, it is the last day of school at Roosevelt High and the students engage in a series of nasty pranks which makes the school Joe Clark shaped up in Lean on Me well-behaved by comparison. Strickland's face is a perpetual sneer and he is not above breaking a student's desk with an axe if that student is messing with him. Why would an axe be in a classroom? I don't know and asking would not get us any closer to a reasonable explanation.
The school is cutting back on staff, so Andy, fearing for his job under threat by the principal, rats out Strickland and gets him fired after the whole axe incident. Strickland challenges spineless Andy to a fist fight at 3:00 and Andy goes into damage control mode trying to get out of the fight. You would think most schools on their last day would let the students out early instead of at 3:00, so maybe their pranks are a reasonable protest. Actually, this oversight exists so the suspense can be dragged out longer as Andy tries more desperate measures to avoid his fate. Oh, and Andy's wife is about to give birth any second now and his daughter is performing in her school talent show (again on the last day of school. Man, these schools are heartless). Strickland is not permitted to have any backstory. He is just the menacing, sneering tough guy whose job is to grow more and more pissed off as the day progresses.
Andy is able to touch all the bases, work through all of the detours, and still show up on time for the fight, with the news going viral to the point that a church would display on its sign, "Pray for Andy Campbell." Apparently, everyone but the police has caught wind of this fight since there are none to be found when it commences. I know, I know. I should just stop analyzing and just enjoy the movie. \After all, Fist Fight isn't meant to be plumbed for depth or meaning, It is simply a goofy comedy not meant to be taken seriously. Fair enough, but shouldn't comedies be funny or pointed satire? I read a review of the movie praising it as a satire shining a light on the troubled educational system in the 21st century. I'm not sure the writers put that much thought into it, but they will surely take the praise. There isn't exactly a lot to spread around.
Then again, just watch the fact that the Trump administration's Secretary of Education is someone who has never set foot inside a public school, but calls for their banishment, and maybe that is satire writing itself.
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