Review: Here Comes the Boom
Actor Kevin James has starred in some pretty terrible movies. It's a shame that he's become a part of the Happy Madison team that has wantonly doled out dreck film after dreck film. He's a comedic actor that has some real talent, and he's capable of being physically funny while maintaining a sense of boyish vulnerability. Here Comes the Boom, which he also co-scripted, is the closest James has come to making a good film, and in it, he exhibits some of the strengths mentioned earlier. The trouble with Here Comes the Boom is that it has way too much of that Happy Madison brand of comedy, so any goodwill the film builds is diluted.
Middle school teacher Scott Voss (James) isn't a very good teacher. He rides the coattails of a Teacher of the Year award he won ten years ago and is a constant thorn in the side of school administrators with his tardiness and indifference. He's got one friend in the music teacher Marty Streb (Henry Winkler). When Marty gets in a potential financial bind, and it looks like the school is going to cut the music program, thus putting Marty out of a job, Scott valiantly stands up for what's right and declares that the teachers will help raise the money together. While trying to raise money, he befriends a former MMA fighter and enlists his help to train him to raise money in an incredibly dangerous and irresponsible way.
The problem, of which there are many with Here Comes the Boom, is that there isn't a single original thought throughout the entire movie. The "save-the-rec-center" school trope has been done to death, as well as the sports movie cliches that only serve to make this an easily dismissible genre. Salma Hayek even plays a school nurse here, which she's done before. Besides the unoriginality of it all, if you took away the juvenile humor, all you have is a weak attempt at recreating the quality that came from the commercially unsuccessful but still amazing Warrior.
The script itself is littered with problems. Characters are introduced or placed in scenes with no explanation as to who they are, or how they ended up there. Things like that throw off the pacing, which is the biggest issue with any Happy Madison production.
As a sports movie, the execution of the fights onscreen aren't done well at all. When an inexperienced MMA fighter never has to take a punch to the face, it's easy to see how in that unlikely circumstance he does manage to become a moderate success. The instruction Scott receives is never anything more than his being in a gym hitting a bag being held by the MMA expert "teaching" him. It's baffling how a script this inept ever made it past studio executives.
MMA fans might see something in Here Comes the Boom to cheer about, but if an MMA movie is what you're looking for, chances are you missed Warrior last year, and you should watch that instead.