[REVIEW] Fist Fight

I never thought I’d say this but, I should have seen The Great Wall, instead.

Fist Fight stars Charlie Day and Ice Cube in a comedy about two high school teachers that, you guessed it, are going to fist fight. Day plays Mr. Campbell, a “nice guy” teacher, but is actually a wormy shit, like Harry Potter’s Peter Pettigrew. Ice Cube plays Mr. Strickland, a teacher with a temper who, coincidentally, is only a shotgun shy of being Mr. Strickland from Back to the Future Part II.

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Comin' straight outta Hill Valley, slacker.

On the last day of school, also known as Senior Prank Day, Mr. Strickland (Cube) is fired from his teaching job for going HAM on some students in class and blames Mr. Campbell (Day) for ratting him out. He then challenges Campbell to a fight after school. Campbell is not a fighter, and spends the rest of the film trying to get out of it.

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WILL SOMEONE PLEASE PUNCH THIS "MAN?"

I can’t fault Campbell for telling the truth in order to keep his own job, but Campbell he is such a sniveling little snake about it. In order to get out of the fight, he tries to plant drugs on Strickland to get him arrested. The fact that his “friends” (Tracy Morgan, Jillian Bell) continually call Campbell a pussy should be funny, but it’s so true that you’re just like, “Yup. That sounds about right.” Even Campbell’s wife (played by JoAnna Garcia) tells him she figured he would just bend over and take it.

Speaking of side characters, let’s get into them. Jillian Bell plays “Jillian” from Workaholics, if she wanted to bang high school boys all the time. Tracy Morgan plays Tracy Morgan. I don’t know what the fuck they were trying to do with Christina Hendricks: There’s a legit misunderstanding early on in the film where Hendricks’ character, Miss Monet, catches Campbell in a compromising position with a student. But instead of telling the principal or the cops, she keeps insisting that Mr. Hendricks should cut Campbell’s face up with a knife because “he’s a pervert.”

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We miss you, Hank.

Kumail Nanjiana (Silicon Valley) plays an apathetic school security guard, who mostly does a “who’s on first” bit with Cube and Day (which was funny as shit, to be honest). And Dean Norris (Breaking Bad) as Principal Tyler was the highlight of the movie. He is continually pranked by the students, and his reactions are comedy gold.

Final verdict: It’s the only comedy out this weekend, so if you’ve got the time and extra money lying around, it’s a fine “brainless” comedy to waste 90 minutes. The outtakes during the credits show how much of the performances were improv. That’s not always a bad thing, as the cast was pretty funny, but that’s all it seemed to be. A basic script that relied too heavily on its cast to improv. I do want to reiterate how funny Norris was in this movie. I would rather watch his story for that day than the one we got.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 blunts you’ll need to smoke to enjoy this movie.