Critic Reviews

It’s rare that a movie with so many F-bombs and drawings of male reproductive organs has such a witty Ken Burns gag. Fist Fight is a knockout.

A consistently intelligent (or at least bright), coherently constructed comedy that is on occasion a rather pointed critique of the American education system in the early 21st century. Don’t let that keep you away, though. It’s more often than not really funny.

It’s stupid, mindless, and crude, but I laughed throughout and admittedly can’t wait to watch it again.

For much of its fast-paced running time, the film, which involves an after-school fight between two polar-opposite teachers, is just amusing enough to make up for its sheer preposterousness.

While I can’t exactly say that the movie cheered me up, it did give me something I needed. Not catharsis or uplift but a bracing dose of profane, sloppy, reasonably well-directed hostility. We take what we can get.

Thanks to that cast, and some savvy direction, you might very well enjoy Fist Fight. But don’t be surprised if it also leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

C+ gags and D- supporting characters sabotage the final grade, but a perma-livid Cube is the star pupil and the brutal playground punch-up doesn’t disappoint.

The fact is that moviegoers deserve a better class of comedy, or at least movies that aren’t composed of one part recycled three-act filler and one part vamping.

There are too many misses among the hits. Once you get past the premise, there’s not a lot farther to go

The movie works best when it finds a balance between flatly familiar and over-aggressively unexpected.