By Roger Moore
 

FILM: Here Comes the Boom
CAST: Kevin James, Henry Winkler, Salma Hayek, Greg Germann
DIRECTION: Frank Coraci
 
Kid-friendly funnyman Kevin James is at his cuddliest in Here Comes the Boom. And he has to be. This amusing but sometimes unsettling comedy marries the teacher-turns-to-mixed -martial arts mayhem of Warrior to that wholesome family dramedy Mr Holland’s Opus.
It works, after a fashion. But that doesn’t mean you won’t wince.
James plays Scott Voss, a Boston high school biology teacher who is a decade past his Teacher of the Year days. He’s a burnout, habitually late for class, not shy about telling even that rare eager student (Filipino singer-actress Charice) that what he’s teaching and what they’re learning “just doesn’t matter”.
But he’s touched by seeing that rare colleague who is still inspired and inspiring. And when put-upon Mr Streb (Henry Winkler) and his music programme are the first things on the chopping block when Principal Betcher (Greg Germann) has to slash the budget, Scott is moved to act. He’ll raise the $48,000 needed to save his friend’s job and his orchestra.
Bake sales won’t be enough, as the fetching school nurse (Salma Hayek) discovers. And part-time work teaching citizenship classes to immigrants won’t raise much cash, either. But that collision with a collection of semi-stereotypes is where Scott meets the gregarious Niko, played with an amateurish verve by martial artist Bas Rutten.
Niko may teach “disco street fighting” classes at the swanky health club down the street. But he used to be a mixed-martial arts fighter.
Scott convinces this Dutch (the accent comes and goes) brawler to train him so that he can get into the ring — the octagon — take a beating, and get paid for it.
Which is what he does, running afoul of school policy and impressing the nurse, whom he flirts with constantly.
James is in fighting trim here, the latest in a line of overweight yet graceful funnymen. He’s developed a comfortable screen presence that takes away the impression that he was working too hard for laughs.
Winkler has his best role since, what, Night Shift?
And James, Winkler, Hayek and Rutten make an amusing ensemble and click together. The importance of high school music programmes is emphasised, the struggles schools face in tight times are played up.
There’s an accidental connection to the schools-in-trouble drama Won’t Back Down that doesn’t work against the movie.
Director Frank (Zookeeper) Coraci does a great job with the fights and the slapstick stuff, and keeps his camera pointed at James, wherever possible.
But here’s something the movie botches. There’s too much Inside Baseball stuff regarding mixed-martial arts. Faces show up, and the entire audience is supposed to know who these guys are.
It’s a growing sport, sure. But it’s still a fringe dweller, and I wouldn’t know Mark DellaGrotte from the third string cornerback of the Buffalo Bills.
It’s corny to use them, and corny to call such cameo performers by name. But it’s necessary. And DellaGrotte has a big role, pitching in on Scott’s training.
And as Here Comes the Boom — that’s the song Scott wants to use as his enter-the-arena music — winds towards the ending we all see coming, the violence of all can be a bit much. Mixed-martial arts is a bloody, brutal, brawling sport; its fighters are all muscles, tattoos, shaved heads and, in the case of the guy we know Scott will have to fight (Krzysztof Soszynski), metal teeth.
But even though Boom doesn’t pull its punches, it’s still a lightweight genre picture, a patchwork comedy that makes good use of its biggest patch — Kevin James. — MCT

Crossing your path


FILM: Alex Cross
CAST: Tyler Perry, Matthew Fox, Rachel Nichols, Jean Reno
DIRECTION: Rob Cohen
 
Alex Cross is an interesting exercise in back-engineering, a prequel that takes us back to the days before the psychologist/police profiler was the sage, solemn and inscrutable sleuth Morgan Freeman ably brought to the screen in two films over a decade ago.
This Cross is cocky, a bit trigger-happy, prone to revenge, a real “action hero”. And this Cross is played by Tyler Perry.
But by definition, he’s less interesting. When you fill in somebody’s back story, you strip away their “loner” mystique. When you focus on the flippant in a film about a frantic hunt for a psychopathic assassin, you diminish the urgency of the hunt and remove the gravitas of the character.
And when you make Tyler Perry run and point a gun, you remember why nobody’s ever used him as an action figure before.
We meet Cross as a domesticated and revered Detroit “detective-doctor”, a hyper-observant wizard his colleagues (Edward Burns, Rachel Nichols) call “Gandalf”, a man his boss (John C McGinley) can point at a crime and say, “Solve it, please”.
That’s what happens when an unnamed killer tortures and murders a rich woman with a penchant for mixed-martial arts fighters. Matthew Fox is a coiled spring of tension in this part — lean, all muscles and tattoos and shaved head. He has the budget, the gadgets and the mania for assaulting members of a company involved in Detroit redevelopment, no matter what security measures they take.
He’s also something of a psychotic cliché — twitchy, with blurry flashbacks that make him snap just as he’s about to remove somebody’s fingers or shoot out their eyes. He does Picasso-tribute charcoal sketches that he leaves at the crime scenes — “clues” — and drives a charcoal-coloured Cadillac CTS, a chunk of product placement so blatant (among other General Motors plugs) as to deserve its own billing.
Cross will cross swords and wits with the killer, who calls him to taunt him. “Confucius said, ‘When setting off on the path of revenge, dig two graves.’”
Will Cross get his man, and will he pay the price?
The script is freely adapted from James Patterson’s “origin story” novel and is packed with indulgent dumbing down. German security folk snap “You EEEdiots” at the Detroit cops, characters say unnaturally flattering things about other characters (Jean Reno is a tycoon under threat). Much of the movie is Cross’s home life — happily married (Carmen Ejogo), father of two, who keeps his “Nana Mama” (feisty Cicely Tyson) in the house with him, as cook and dispenser of the wisdom of the ages.
Rob (xXx) Cohen pays more attention to the shootouts and fights than the flow of the film, never fretting that there isn’t a moment’s suspense, never letting us feel for the victims.
Alex Cross is not an awful movie, but it isn’t a very compelling one. Cohen, the screenwriters and Perry share the blame for that.
If Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider had been this weak, there’d have been no reason, no urge to revisit the sad, serious character Freeman brought to life so vividly.—By Roger Moore, MCT
 
(DVDs courtesy:
Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha)