Friday, June 6, 2008

Movie review: The Foot Fist Way

Minor league Tae Kwon Do requires major league E-G-O, it seems.

By John P. Meyer

In addition to its weirdness and offbeat - often embarrassing - bouts of humor ("Was it O.K. for me to laugh at that?", you may frequently find yourself wondering), I *KNEW* there was something rude and crude and borderline insulting about The Foot Fist Way, and here's the supporting evidence: Will Ferrell had something to do with it.

Fred Simmons: black belt

... Foot Fist ... is done in standard mock-doc style, with an incognito camera person keeping his lens peeled on the small town dojo operated by blowhard Fred Simmons (Danny R. McBride), whose Tae Kwon Do black belt competition days may be long behind him but whose ego is still alive and spin kicking at the the championship level.

Fred has taken on a lot of youngsters as students, providing them with valuable real-world training. Not in martial arts so much as in the ways of adult behavior. Trailer trash adults, that is. For instance, he schools them in the flagrant use of foul mouth swear words (featuring the scatological, the sexual and the profane - that holy trinity of obscenity). Further, he subjects them to the grisly details (and abusive side-effects) of his own marital troubles: his flyblown and overcooked blond bombshell wife, Suzie (Mary Jane Bostic, playing the part with gum-smacking, slatternly acumen) has been discovered to be cheating on him (after a fashion), and this just BURNS FRED UP. Which leads to a drubbing of one of his students, who happens to be the adolescent son of the guy Suzie got all manual with at the office party.

How to beat up a little kid

Lil' Stevie Fisher takes his beating gracefully. While he may be hurt, it's Fred who receives the bigger owie: Mrs. Fisher has watched Fred deck her son, and immediately pulls Stevie (and her monthly fees) out of class.

Fred is (quite successfully) made out to be a self-deluded egotistical train wreck whose best sparring is done with his tongue. And even that's limited to unimaginative verbal abuse of people mostly under the age of ten. When not playing psycho head games with his students and spouse, he's obsessing over martial arts legend Chuck "The Truck" Wallace (played by Ben Best, who co-wrote the screenplay along with McBride and director/actor Jody Hill).

Chuck "The Truck" Wallace greets his fans. Sort of.

The Wallace character, who we first meet at a hotel room party featuring nunchaku and lines of coke, comes across as a dark-side Chuck Norris who uses his fame to leverage liaisons with adoring females and shows up at promotional events drunk, mean and laser-focused on obtaining his up-front appearance fee. (Hey, I sympathize.)

The most fascinating character in this piece may be the one played by the film's director (Jody Hill). Mike McAlister is an enigmatic long-haired acquaintance of Fred's from his glory days. He (Mike) essays the dagger-staring, evil-intent countenance of a kung fu movie villain. He also seems to have his skills about him to a greater extent than any of the other players. But at core, Mike's a pitiable social misfit who wears his oriental-styled fighting garb in public and terrorizes young students in the back seat of the car on the way to a big convention by asking things like, "Have you ever had sex?"

Mike McAlister is dead serious, has mad skillz and is weird.

Bothersome to some film fans - but, thankfully, only the discerning ones - will be the choppiness of the edits. In some of the sparring scenes we just have time to become enthralled by the action when suddenly - CUT! - our vantage jumps to one of Fred's office conversations, seemingly mid-punch.

The movie culminates in a pair of confrontations - one private and one public - between Fred and his erstwhile idol Chuck Wallace. These battles prove to be oddly satisfying, given the fact that both characters are poor role models for anything but crash test dummies.

Oh, and another satisfying denouement finds Fred confronting Suzie, who's proven herself once again to be nothing if not gregarious. This little scene involves a wedding ring and urination, though I'm not saying in what connection.

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• Movie review: Kung Fu Panda (June 6, 2008)

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