Director Richie Keen calls his debut film Fist Fight “a rated-R John Hughes film.”
The story of two teachers, played by Ice Cube and Charlie Day, who settle their differences in the schoolyard after the final bell is more rough ‘n’ tumble than anything the Sixteen Candles director ever attempted but Keen says he learned from Hughes’ habit of making sure the characters were true to themselves.
“John Hughes was one of my idols and he was so good at doing sweet moments. You’d see a movie and be laughing your ass off and then there’d be a real, sweet, great moment.
“I have my radar up that the heart, especially in this movie, comes from a very real character place. I feel like a very typical note that a director and writer might get is, ‘We need more heart.’ For me what they are really saying is that they are not connecting with the characters enough so I was very careful. It’s an R-rated comedy about two guys punching … each other a lot so I didn’t try and infuse false, sweet moments.”
Hughes’ influence dates back to childhood.
“I grew up in the ‘80s in suburban Chicago, in Highland Park, Illinois,” he says. “I just couldn’t believe they were making movies in and around my hometown. I was a little kid and John Hughes started coming into town. In Ferris Bueller there were some great scenes in my hometown. I would hop on my bike and I’d go watch them film. That’s how close it was happening. In high school it was Home Alone. I thought it was cool and this is going to sound strange but every time I was on or near a set I was like, ‘This is where I should be.’ It just lit me up in a way that other things didn’t.”
For years Keen made commercials, short films and was the house director on the hit TV comedy It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia but says “I had no chance of getting this or any movie.”
After much cajoling he landed the Fist Fight gig, with just one proviso. He had to convince Ice Cube he was the man for the job. With just one day’s notice he flew to Atlanta to meet the Barbershop star.
“I had dressed in a nice outfit as my Jewish parents had taught me to do when you have a job interview,” he says. “I started drinking coffee and as time passed I started getting more jittery and more sweaty and by the time Ice Cube was waiting in the lobby I was in a T-shirt and sweaty.”
Intimidated by the rap legend — “The guy wrote No Vaseline,” he says. “It’s intimidating to meet him.” He pitched for 45 minutes, finally ending with, “‘Cube, are we doing this?’ Cube smiled and leaned back in his chair and thought for a second and said, ‘You know what? You flew out here at a moment’s notice. I love what you had to say. Let’s go make a movie motherBLEEPER.’”
The result is a raunchy movie with Ice Cube, some John Hughes-style heart and even some social commentary.
“I really wanted to shine a light on the public school system. Not to be heavy about it but I wanted to ground it in something.”
“Fist Fight” is a vulgar teen comedy, like “Porky’s” only with 1000% more jokes about penises, masturbation and sex. Then there’s the bad language that completely outpaces f-word aficionados Tarantino and Scorsese combined. Grandma won’t like this loose remake of the 1987 teen comedy “Three O’Clock High,” but anyone who’s ever dreamed of a raunchy version of “Revenge of the Nerds” should find a laugh or two here.
It’s the end of the semester at the rough-‘n-tumble Roosevelt High School, the kind of school where teachers complain the students are unteachable and the guidance counselor smokes crack to cope with the chaos. To compound matters, it’s Prank Day. That means strategically placed paint bombs, a horse, high on meth, roaming the halls and other mean spirited and dangerous hijinks.
Trying to get through the day are Andy Campbell (Charlie Day), a well-meaning English teacher and Ron Strickland (Ice Cube), the world’s toughest history teacher. Between the student shenanigans and budget cuts that threaten everyone’s jobs, tensions run high. When Campbell accidentally gets Strickland fired a bad day goes from crappy to craptastic. “I’m going to fight you,” says the amped up Strickland looking for some street justice. “After school meet me in the parking lot and we’ll handle this.”
The mild-mannered Campbell has never been in a fight but knows he can’t back down. As the #teacherfight spreads across social media a crowd gathers in the parking lot to witness the carnage. Before the fight begins, however, Campbell has a few things to take care of, including dancing with his daughter at a talent show.
“Fist Fight” is an anything-goes comedy that softens nears the end to deliver a few knockout punches on bullying, school budget cuts and doing the right thing. The messaging gets lost amid the mile-a-minute gags but its there if you squint your eyes and look very closely.
Not that the movie is much interested in anything but the laughs. It tries hard—almost too hard—to get a giggle out of the viewer, carpet bombing the audience with jokes, only about half of which land. Ten-year-old Alexa Nisenson nearly steals the show with a no-holds barred rendition of a Big Sean song. It’s wrong, completely wrong, but her message to a school bully is undeniable and joyful even if it turns the air at the junior high talent show blue. Also, it’s great to see Tracy Morgan back in action after his car accident.
Most of the heavy lifting lands on the backs of Day and Cube. It’s funny to hear Ice Cube seamlessly work in the title of his most famous song into a gag and Day brings a certain kind of Don Knotts charm to the role of the mild-mannered man who finds his inner gumption. They both deliver laughs, but many are of the oh-no-he-didn’t variety rather than deep belly laughs.
“Fist Fight” doesn’t lack punch, but many of the jokes feel like open handed slaps than direct hits.
Film critic Richard Crouse sits down with Nneka Elliott to look at some of the new movies out this week, including “The Penguins of Madagascar,” “Horrible Bosses 2” and “Foxcatcher.”
At one time or another everyone has fantasized about, if not killing, then at least doing grievous bodily harm to an employer. The guys in Horrible Bosses, the 2011 comedy starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis, actually tried to make their fantasies reality.
The idea of squaring off against the boss man struck a chord with a lot of people and the movie raked in more than $100 million. So the inevitable sequel, Horrible Bosses 2, hit theatres earlier this week.
They’ll have to go some ways to top the last trio of bad bosses: Jennifer Aniston as a foul-mouthed sexual predator with a bad habit of using laughing gas as foreplay; a manic boss with no scruples in the form of Kevin Spacey; and a drug-addled loser with a penchant for cocaine and masseuses who inherits a business from his papa, played by Colin Farrell, who berates his employees for coming in late after attending his dad’s and their old boss’s funeral.
“Well, maybe that excuse would have flown when my dad was here, but I’m in charge now.”
But even that terrible trio pales in comparison to the worst movie bosses of all time.
One of the worst is Working Girl’s Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver). Parker is two-faced, and attempts to pass off her trusted secretary Tess McGill’s (Melanie Griffith) ideas as her own. Roger Ebert said of Weaver’s performance, “From her first frame on the screen, she has to say all the right things while subtly suggesting that she may not mean any of them.”
In the end, Tess teaches her a lesson about honesty and gets Katharine fired.
Katharine looks like a pussycat compared to Buddy Ackerman (Kevin Spacey), the tyrannical Hollywood producer in Swimming with Sharks.
“You are nothing!” he says to his new assistant Guy (Frank Whaley). “If you were in my toilet I wouldn’t bother flushing it. My bathmat means more to me than you!”
Guy finally snaps, kidnaps Buddy and tortures him. But in an unexpected twist, the extreme behaviour earns Buddy’s respect and Guy gets a promotion.
Finally, if you mix the swooping white hair and bad attitude of Cruella DeVille with the people skills of Vlad the Impaler, you will come up with Miranda Priestly, the worst boss in all of moviedom. Played by Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, Priestly is the editrix of a fictional fashion magazine called Runway who never met an assistant she couldn’t humiliate with a withering glance and a few choice words. “By all means, move at a glacial pace,” she says to newbie Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway). “You know how that thrills me.”
“Horrible Bosses 2” is being billed as a comedy and stars people—like the Jasons, Bateman and Sudeikis, Charlie Day and Jennifer Aniston—usually associated with making people laugh, but does the almost complete absence of anything giggle worthy preclude us from labeling it a comedy? Discuss.
In the second peek at the pitiful employment record of Nick (Bateman), Kurt (Sudeikis) and Dale (Day), the guys go into business for themselves. Their product, the Shower Buddy—a shower nozzle that shoots shampoo and conditioner as well as water—seems like a sure fire As-Seen-On-TV hit but when a shady billionaire (Christoph Waltz) tries to swindle them out of their livelihood they decide to get even by kidnapping his son (Chris Pine). “If we’ve learned one thing about ourselves,” says Nick, “it’s that we’re not murderers.”
Off the top it has to be said that Bateman, Sudeikis and Day have great chemistry together. They joke, jostle and jape like brothers, giggling their way through the movie as if they are in on a fantastic gag that only they get. The trio seems to be having fun, and judging by the outtake reel that plays over the credits, the set was filled with laughter every time someone blew a line. If only the audience could have as much fun watching the movie as the cast did making it.
“Horrible Bosses 2” is a demotion from the original film. There are more laughs on the average job application than in this workplace “comedy.” It’s misogyny masquerading as humour, with unlikeable characters and an inane premise that diminishes in interest as the running time increases.
Everyone has fantasizes about if not killing, then at least doing grievous bodily harm on an employer. The guys in “Horrible Bosses,” a new comedy starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis, actually do something about it.
Chances are you’ve never had a boss as mean, manipulating or just plain odd as the bosses in this movie. These people make Genghis Khan look like an equal opportunity employer. Bateman works for Kevin Spacey, a corporate shark not above exploiting his workers and then taking a promotion and pay raise for himself. The cast’s other Jason, Sedaris, is saddled with Colin Farrell an unscrupulous coke head with a bad attitude and an even worse comb over. Finally Day works for Jennifer Aniston, a dentist who uses laughing gas as a sex toy.
All are stuck in their jobs and fed up with the daily humiliation offered in their workplaces decide to do the only thing a reasonable person would do—kill their bosses.
OK, I was joking about the reasonable person part. Of course no reasonable person would try to hire a hit man on the Internet or break into their bosses homes looking for ways to kill them, but this is a comedy so we’ll accept that. Or will we? The movie stars off strong, funny and well paced but it’s central premise—let’s kill our bosses!—seems forced and it sucks some of the funny from the middle part of the movie.
There are laughs for sure, but the bungling of the crucial set up scene left me feeling like I was watching a funny enough movie marred with a silly premise.
The cast holds up well. The Jasons bring their usual brand of well practiced funny, and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” star Charlie Day is a funny find but thesis rises here are Farrell and Aniston. We’ve seen Spacey do this kind of thing before, the manic boss with no scruples (ie: “Swimming with Sharks”) but his cast mates are breaking some new ground. Farrell throws vanity out the window to play a drug addled loser with a penchant for cocaine and masseuses. He’s funny and edgy and does work here unlike we’ve seen before from him.
Aniston leaves her America’s Sweetheart persona behind to play a foul mouthed predator with a bad habit of using gas as foreplay. If this doesn’t wipe away any traces of Rachel left over from her TV work, I don’t know what will.
“Horrible Bosses” is a darkly funny employee revenge film that mostly works, I just wish the motivation felt more authentic.
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
