{"id":11850,"date":"2025-05-08T09:51:24","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T13:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=11850"},"modified":"2025-05-08T09:51:24","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T13:51:24","slug":"fist-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/05\/08\/fist-fight\/","title":{"rendered":"Fist Fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Fist Fight <\/strong>(2017)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language throughout, sexual content, nudity, drug material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Richie Keen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Van Robichaux and Evan Susser\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Dominic Lewis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Eric Alan Edwards\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 17, 2017 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Charlie Day, Ice Cube, Tracy Morgan, Jillian Bell, Dean Norris, Christina Hendricks, Kumail Nanjiani, Dennis Haysbert, JoAnna Garcia Swisher, Alexa Nisenson, Kym Whiteley, Austin Zajur, Stephanie Weir, Gordon Danniels, Bill Kottkamp.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $32.2M (US)\/$41.1M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0If you grew up in the 80s then you probably remember a little teen comedy called Three O\u2019Clock High. It only aired about a million times on cable. That, of course, is a rough estimate. Fist Fight<\/strong> is essentially a remake of the 1987 movie with teachers instead of students. The premise is nearly identical (save for a few additional plot details) with a weaker teacher trying to get out of an after-school parking lot fight with a colleague known for his intimidating tactics.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I had a bad feeling about this one from the get-go. The trailer told me everything I needed to know. First, like most other comedies these days, it relies on crudeness rather than actual comedy in an attempt to make audiences laugh. The mere mention by a guidance counselor of her crystal meth habit isn\u2019t automatically funny. Second, it stars Charlie Day (Horrible Bosses), an actor-comedian who has roughly the same effect on me as fingernails on a chalkboard. This guy is ANNOYING! I really don\u2019t understand his appeal. Third, Three O\u2019Clock High is a great movie. It\u2019s clever, original and funny. Fist Fight <\/strong>is none of these things. It\u2019s crude, mean-spirited and repetitive. I did laugh once and I\u2019ll explain more about that in a moment. The point I\u2019m trying to make is that there was really no reason to make this movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s the last day of school at Roosevelt High and the teachers should be happy. The students are a bunch of monsters. Apparently, the last day of school is also Prank Day which means the kids torture their teachers more than usual with practical jokes involving horses amped-up on meth running through the halls, booby traps that squirt paint and outlines of male genitalia on the football field. They\u2019re like a wacky version of the student body of Eastside High (Lean on Me). The teachers should be happy but they\u2019re all worried about losing their jobs. The school is doing cutbacks meaning that they\u2019re firing teachers left and right. All of them are fair game.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Day plays Andy Campbell, a nice-guy English teacher that everybody walks all over. His colleagues and student neither respect nor like him but he doesn\u2019t seem to notice. Talk about bad days, this poor schlemiel is having the worst. Besides the prospect of impending unemployment, his very pregnant wife (Swisher, Reba) is due to give birth at any time and he promised his insecure preteen daughter (Nisenson, Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life) that he\u2019ll perform with her in her school\u2019s talent show that afternoon. A situation arises at work and Andy is forced to choose between saving his own job or that of a colleague. Naturally, he opts for the former which puts him in very deep doo-doo with said colleague, temperamental history teacher Ron Strickland (Ice Cube, Friday). Did I say temperamental? I meant insane! We\u2019re talking about a guy who goes after a prankster student with a fire axe. Anyway, Strickland challenges Andy to a fist fight at 3 o\u2019clock in the school parking lot. Andy spends the rest of the school day looking for a way to get out of it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I watched the first hour or so of Fist Fight <\/strong>in a state of irritation. Rarely have I seen so many unlikable characters assembled into one 90-minute movie. I didn\u2019t like a single person in Fist Fight<\/strong>, not even the so-called hero of the piece. After five minutes, I understood completely why anybody would want to beat up Day\u2019s character. He\u2019s a twerp. How can you root for a guy who you want to see get his ass kicked? It kind of defeats the purpose of the movie. Ice Cube\u2019s character is a cross between psycho and street thug. Many rumors about his life before teaching circulate; depending on who\u2019s telling the story, he was either a street gang enforcer or a Special Ops killer. Either way, he\u2019s nothing more than a workplace bully. While I didn\u2019t really like his character, I did like him better than Andy. Ice Cube, with that million-dollar scowl and million-mile glare, is the better actor. He basically serves the same function here as he does in the Ride Along movies, he makes it bearable.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As for the rest of the talented cast, they\u2019re basically wasted in Fist Fight<\/strong>. Bell (The Night Before) plays guidance counselor Holly, an admitted drug user and sexual predator. When she isn\u2019t talking about coming to work wasted, she openly talks about lusting after one of her male students. While tasteless and wrong, a character like this could be funny if the writing was any good. It\u2019s not so she isn\u2019t. Morgan (30 Rock) as a gym teacher plays himself. His character really serves no purpose. Neither does the one played by Christina Hendricks (Mad Men). She shows up a few times, makes a few threatening gestures and that\u2019s it. There\u2019s no rhyme or reason with the supporting characters. It\u2019s the same problem the movie has as a whole.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Fist Fight <\/strong>is pretty bad up to a point. Then a funny thing happens (literally). Predictably, a crucial meeting with the principal ends up conflicting with the daughter\u2019s talent show. This means a lot of racing around as Andy tries to do both. We\u2019ve seen this exact same scenario before. The funny thing is the performance itself. Andy decides they should scrap their original number and do this rap song by Big Sean instead. It\u2019s what the kid wanted all along. They never mention the name of the song. If you thought Abigail Breslin\u2019s pageant scene in Little Miss Sunshine was wrong, wait until you get a load of what goes down at the talent show here. OMG, it\u2019s so freaking wrong and so freaking hysterical. It\u2019s a lead-in to the climactic fight with is actually well-executed. There\u2019s some good physical comedy on display.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Amidst all the crudeness, vulgarity and f-bombs, there\u2019s a message about standing up for yourself AND a statement about the current state of public education. Like Henry Winkler\u2019s character in 1982\u2019s Night Shift, something finally makes Andy snap and fight back against all the bullies in his life. Okay, I can get behind that. Given that it\u2019s the age of technology and social media, the teacher fight goes viral and becomes a symbol of everything that\u2019s wrong with the public education system. Okay, whatever. Maybe it\u2019s just me but the idea of a movie as inconsequential as Fist Fight <\/strong>having a social conscience feels forced and false. In the end, it\u2019s just not a good movie. It\u2019s not as funny as it thinks it is. Director Richie Keen, making his feature film debut, still has a lot to learn. Most of the jokes land with a thud. It\u2019s not the worst comedy I\u2019ve seen but it\u2019s no comedy knock-out either.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fist Fight (2017)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language throughout, sexual content, nudity, drug material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Richie Keen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Van Robichaux and Evan Susser\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Dominic Lewis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Eric Alan Edwards\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 17, 2017 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Charlie Day, Ice Cube, Tracy Morgan, Jillian Bell, Dean Norris, Christina Hendricks, Kumail Nanjiani, Dennis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Fist-Fight-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11850"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11871,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11850\/revisions\/11871"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}