Warm apple sauce.....

Rating: 7/10 (24 January 2013)

Kevin James plays a teacher who everyone loves, and if they don't love him, by the end of the film they will anyway.
He is a teacher, and when he hears that they are closing the music programme, equalling Fonzie in losing his job. Buty hey, he's a nice guy and decides to enter the world of mixed martial arts, in order to get the 42 thousand the school needs.
In the process, he gets involved with sibling problems, a stereotypical head-teacher, ethnic comedy, and Salma Hayak, wandering in from the set of The Faculty as the school nurse/love interest, who cannot say yes to James advances....yet.
I really wanted to hate this movie. I loved James in The King Of Queens, but Paul Blart was an absolute stinker, and this had 'fat teacher fights' slapstick all over it.
It turns out that I really hate myself for falling for it's charms and it's predictability so much.
No matter how much his films vex, James is a really likable screen presence, so you cannot help but root for him, and beside him for the most of the film, we have Winkler, who is as equally nice, according to his movie output for the last ten years.
The score is that uplifting tune you hear on every underdog movie ever made, and it's flashily edited.
It shouldn't be good, but thanks to diminished expectations, it entertained, and for a few minutes, it sucked me in and hit the spot, even though I knew what twists would occur, that he would get the money, Hayak, and the respect of his peers.
It's not laugh out loud funny, I think I may have chuckled once, but the feel-good factor is there, and that's why it worked.
see it, and forget about the whole film ten minutes later.