The Foot Fist Way

Dork gets humiliated

2006

Review: June 17, 2008

Director: Jody Hill

Starring: Danny R. McBride, Ben Best, Mary Jane Bostic, Carlos Lopez

If you want.

THE SETUP:

Loser guy at suburban Tae Kwon Do studio endures mucho personal humiliations.

DISCUSSION:

This looked middling funny from the trailer, but then I read a few reviews that said that it went too far in humiliating its main character, and had him go a little far in being such a jerk that he became irredeemable, and this made me more interested. So it was horribly hot and humid, and that was enough to get me and my friend into the theater. I’m afraid I can give the air-conditioning only a very mediocre review.

So this guy is Fred Simmons, a suburban schlub who thinks he’s pretty darn badass, although it’s quite clear just from looking at him that he’s a giant delusional putz. He pulls up this van with flyers taped to the side to perform his “demo” in a parking lot, which is where he breaks some little boards and concrete blocks with his hand. He believes that he is “the king of the demo,” apparently oblivious to the fact that the whole thing is incredibly dorky, and by the way, he’s not the king of it anyway.

So there’s a lot of Fred just doing his thing. When an attractive college girl comes in to ask about his classes, she says she’s also considering other ways to stay in shape, like yoga or meditation, and Fred says “Yeah, meditation’s great and all, but it never saved anyone from a gang-rape situation.” He shows her the trophy that shows he was the national champion—in 1991.

The main, although extremely thin, plot of the movie is that he discovers that his wife gave a handjob to her boss at a party. She leaves him, and he has trouble holding it all together. Since the boss is named Fisher, he assumes that he MUST be the father of this kid in his class, and gets quite rough with the kid, before discovering that, well, he’s not. He also tries to hit on the college girl from earlier, telling her “I know I seem like I’m invincible and no one can hurt me….” She is not receptive to his advances. He then goes through various other emotional trials.

While me and my friend were finding this all generally amusing but not all that great, it was sort of nice that certain other people were apparently finding it the most hilarious thing they’d ever seen, and were erupting in uncontrollable guffaws every few minutes. This is kind of the same sense of humor as in Bad Santa [without the letdown of being from a once-promising director], in that you’re laughing at this guy being such a selfish, insulting prick and total, inappropriate jerk with kids and women. Added to all this, however, is the idea that he’s completely clueless about the vast chasm between his image of himself and the reality of his complete dorkitude.

There’s a whole new layer of humiliation awaiting Fred in his meeting with Chuck The Truck, a sort of Chuck Norris type low-rent action movie star, who turns out to be far different in reality than Fred thought he was. It leads to a sort of climax [again, the plot elements are VERY thin] that resolves itself in a sweet way that shows the affection and admiration his students have for him despite everything. That’s it, then it’s over.

It was definitely amusing and would be a great thing to watch on cable, but I don’t really think anyone needs to run out and make a special effort to see it. It’s nice that some people, judging from the audience’s reaction, found it utterly hilarious. So apparently it does highly appeal to a certain strain of people. Just not me, really.

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

If you like people being inappropriately mean and suffering horrible humiliations, but even so, it'll hold up just fine on cable or DVD.