"The Foot Fist Way" Review - Written by TonyD

“The Foot Fist Way”
2008
** out of ****
Director: Jody Hill
Cast: Danny R. McBride, Ben Best, Mary Jane Bostic


Please realize that it KILLS me not to recommend “The Foot Fist Way.” There are several funny scenes, some of which work due to the amazing talent of comedic actor Danny R. McBride (who was also the best part about “Pineapple Express”), but come the end, the film just doesn’t cut it for me. Nothing seems solved, and at the end of the day, the film seems like it was made so it could stand next to “Napoleon Dynamite.” Some scenes are pretty funny, but where was the film that I was told exists? Where was the hilarious movie?

Here’s the story about the film. Will Ferrell and Adam McKay saw this film back in August, a year and a half later after the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and according to the trailer, they have watched it at least twenty times. So they decided to show this film to the whole-wide world, hoping that it would be the next “Napoleon Dynamite” or something like that. In other words, this film was doomed from the start.

First off, Will Ferrell finds it funny. That’s something scary. Remember his last few movies – “Blades of Glory,” “Semi-Pro,” and “Step Brothers”? Yeah, how NOT funny were they? Secondly, “Napoleon Dynamite” has to be one of the worst films ever made, with all of its geekiness and fucking religious overtones all over the place. Maybe I just don’t get the obsession of being called an idiot. Oh, and they did a good job at releasing it to the whole-wide world, since “The Foot Fist Way” was only released, at the most, in twenty-five theaters. That means it never played in Jersey, where people CRAVE shitty movies.

Fortunately, it is better than “Napoleon Dynamite,” but so is fucking broccoli, and I hate that too.

Fred Simmons (Danny R. McBride) is a Tae Kwon Do instructor who has been going through a tough time. After finding out that his wife Suzie (Mary Jane Bostic) gave her new boss a handjob, he starts beating up on little kids and telling off fat guys. Simmons makes it his mission to meet Chuck “The Truck” Wallace (Ben Best) at a convention, and when Chuck agrees to perform a demonstration in front of Simmons’s students, Simmons believes that everything will be shaping up for him in the future…

Oh, and then something else happens.

But that is all I will say. Like “Napoleon Dynamite,” the story is just a supporting role, whereas the real story is just getting to understand McBride’s character. As the Tae Kwon Do instructor, he must have confidence in himself, and in order to get the kids to have confidence in themselves, he reminds them all that they have no confidence. McBride almost acts as a big bully in a way, but the thing to remember is that this was recommended by Will Ferrell to you.

And do you remember Will Ferrell’s humor in the past five years? Aside from “Stranger than Fiction,” his best film and probably will stay his best for the rest of his career, all of his roles relied on him to yell at people, act like an idiot without realizing that he is an idiot, and talking a whole bunch of stupid babble. What McBride does is almost an exact impersonation of Ferrell’s characters in the past five years, but he does it better than Ferrell could ever do. In one of the scenes, after he finds out about his wife cheating on him, he takes it out on one of the younger kids in his class by punching him a few times and kicking him, Chuck Norris style. While this is one of the more funnier moments of the film, this wouldn’t be without the inspiration of those Will Ferrell movies for the past few years.

That’s not to say that McBride did a terrible job. I actually think that, aside from Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart in “The Dark Knight” and James Franco in “Pineapple Express,” that he puts on one of the best performances of the year. Yes, before the “Pineapple Express,” McBride was becoming a star, but it was only after that and “Tropic Thunder,” the guy has made a name for himself. He’s almost perfect acting like an idiot. The only thing that this guy didn’t do right? Wear a helmet.

The direction by first-time director Jody Hill is well done, but it is the script that is written by him, Ben Best, and McBride that is flawed. Some of the lines are pretty funny, especially whenever they make McBride come off as an obnoxious idiot. Whenever they make him look like a caring guy, the movie becomes boring. It seems like that they save all of the funny moments for whenever McBride shows his true talent, but in a lot of the scenes, there seems to be little talent being shown.

And here is where the film really gets me mad. The ending is too much like the ending of “Napoleon Dynamite.” After Jon Heder dances on stage like a bumblefuck, the movie suddenly comes to a complete close and everything is summed up with some shitty music playing in the background. “The Foot Fist Way” ends after McBride finally does something right, but the ending felt rushed, and the more I thought about it, the more terrible I found it to be. I didn’t know what were any of these characters motives come the end of the film. If they wanted to make a film in vein of “Napoleon Dynamite,” then the directors should pat themselves on the back. They did it.

“The Foot Fist Way” is one of those films that I just wanted to like, but in the end it turned out to be a major disappointment. I’m not completely disheartened over the outcome, but the film could have been much better if a little bit more work was put forward to it. But do you want to know the funniest part about “The Foot Fist Way?”

I finally know what kind of movies Will Ferrell is into, and Christ, it isn’t looking pretty from here.