“Here Comes the Boom” follows in the footsteps of other Mixed martial arts films such as; “Warrior”, “Fighting”, and “Never Back Down” but it tries to do it in a comedic way and fails miserably.
Kevin James plays Scott Voss, a biology teacher who seems to hate his job and care as little as humanly possible about his students. The Movie begins with Voss showing up to school late and being docked a vacation day by his boss Principal Becher,(Greg Germann, who plays the role of the “mean dean” from so many eighties frat movies.) The story uses a staff meeting to introduce the fact that the school needs money or it will have to cut the music program and fire the dedicated music teacher Marty, played by Henry Winkler. Voss meets a Dutch immigrant who trains MMA and decides that his college wrestling experience is enough to try to become an MMA fighter. Through many unlikely events, Voss ends up at the top of the sport.
The plot of the movie was so flimsy that it makes one wonder if the men who wrote the film knew anything about the sport they were trying to cover. James, who practices MMA in real life, makes it seem like any scrub off the street can simply walk in to a cage and make a career out of fighting.
Salma Hayek trots out her Mexican accent as Voss’ love interest. She seems to go through the movie on auto pilot. James and Hayek both play unlikable characters at the start of the movie and the filmmakers simply expect the audience to like them through the film without the characters demonstrating any actual change.
The movie, as terrible as it was, also had its bright spots. Bas Rutten, a former MMA fighter and current fight analyst shines as Nico, the Dutch fight trainer. He is funny throughout the whole movie and draws many laughs especially when he plays against what his physique would suggest. He is a big burly guy who teaches disco spin classes and sings Journey songs in falsetto. It is a hackneyed premise but Rutten makes it work.
In the words of comedian Mike Britt, this movie gets two thumbs to the eyes of anybody who laughed at the commercial, in other words a D minus. Comedic sport films about underdogs such as “Dodgeball” and the “Bad News Bears” have worked in making the audience care about the characters and actually root for them. “Here Comes the Boom” does not.
