When youve got comedians like Judd Apatow, Jonah Hill, Will Ferrell and Adam McKay endorsing your new film, you can’t seemingly lose.
Wait, no Vince Vaughn? Case in point: this small omission seems to be Danny McBride’s biggest “problem” at the moment cause everyone else in comedy Tinseltown seems to adore him. Shot two years ago on credit cards, McBride and co.screened the “The Foot Fist Way” at Sundance ’06 and Ferrell and McKay were so damn impressed they snatched the film via their production imprint and got Paramount Vantage to distrib (Comedian Patton Oswalt called the film, “a sui generis work on par with ‘The Big Lebowski‘ “)
Written by McBride, co-star Ben Best and director Jody Hill, “The Foot Fist Way” tells the tale of Fred Simmons, “king of the [instructional] demo” and an inept strip mall tae kwon do instructor who berates his students while trying to impart the wisdom and skills of the martial art he has ‘mastered’ (“Your weakness disgusts me!” Simmons yells at one of his six-year-old students). Mcbride plays the dim-witted lummox with ace dead pan delivery and you can see why someone like Ferrell would enjoy his comedy (shades of a dim Ricky Bobby). The character is completely delusional and happy go lucky – that is until his whore of a wife starts giving random dudes handjobs at her new job’s office parties.
Simmons tries to keep it together for the sake of his students – a mix of pimply-faced teens, lapdog pre-pubescents and aging losers, but soon unravels in a ball of pathetic blubbering (not before hitting on one his barely legal pupils in a painfully funny/awkward moment – “It may seem like I’m a serious martial artist, but outside of class, I like to relax, go to a musical dance club and get down”). When Simmons discovers his idol/nemesis Chuck “The Truck” Wallace (played by Pyramid member Ben Best) is also banging his wife, he has to challenge him to a local demo-off to regain the respect of the community and his students. Director Hill’s small role as Simmon’s sexually-ambiguous tae-kwon-do friend is rather hilarious.
It’s a laugh-out loud film, err…, or at least for the first 20 minutes. We always love the concept of terrible role models for kids because it’s generally a guarantee for good comedy, but after a strong start with some gut-busting laughs, ‘Foot Fist Way’ quickly becomes very tired and like a decent sketch comedy skit nobody thought to stop.
Abruptly as a swift kick to the groin, the film peters out; the same one-note joke are hammered home over and over and while the rest of the film provides some laughs – they’re far too few in between to justify the running time.
It’s a bit of a shame cause McBride is funny and the entire cast and its creators show tons of promise, but neither they or the martial arts buffony teacher joke can sustain even a short, not-even-90 minute length.
Now we want to know; are these comedians trying to boost their auspicious friends, or do they clearly not have enough quality control in their endorsements? Disappointing. And we actually were looking fwd to this for months. The good part of “The Foot Fist Way” is that it introduces some promising talents that we’ll surely see some high-grade work from eventually, but as for the new masterwork of comedy, this ain’t it. [C+]
[ed. As much as we like to ideally champion an underdog film like this, unfortunately it wasn’t up to snuff]