Fist Fight – Movie Review

Fist Fight – R
Release Date: Fri 17 Feb 2017

When high school teacher Mr. Campbell (Charlie Day) gets his colleague Mr. Strickland (Ice Cube) fired, Strickland challenges Campbell to and after-school fist fight.

The joke, more often than not throughout Fist Fight, is how outrageous every character is. The side characters are all uniformly broad, foul-mouthed mouthpieces for the writers to deliver comedy through. There are some scenes of physical comedy put throughout that are also a kind of uniform style – a single note of humor like “there’s a horse on meth running through the halls.” Said horse appears to be normal apart from being indoors.

There’s little to recommend Fist Fight for. The rare moments that made me crack a smile (Campbell and his daughter’s replacement talent show song) feel more like the movie just beating down my will than something that would be funny out of context. It feels like a feature-length adaptation of the unbearable comedy series Vice Principles.

Aaron and I saw it in the theater and had a discussion in the car: