Recycled inspirational comedy

Rating: 5/10 (31 January 2013)

¨ If you're gonna lose, then I'm gonna help you lose. Deal? ¨
Fans of any Kevin James (or Adam Sandler) comedy will get what they expected going into the movie: a lot of cheap laughs. It isn't a terrible movie, it just is cliché, predictable, and full of the same jokes we've seen repeated over and over again in his other movies. Of course I didn't go into this film expecting it to be an artistic groundbreaking original movie, so I can't say I was disappointed. I knew what I was going in for and I did get what I expected. The truth of the matter is that I laughed through several scenes, but this was honestly a terrible and predictable movie. I would have been better off laughing at any other sitcom comedy on TV during that hour. Kevin James has played this sort of ordinary guy who turns out to be a hero in pretty much all his films, and he has his fan base so it seems to be working for him pretty good. The reality is that these movies are so forgettable some times that you even forget you've seen these same scenes play out over and over again in their previous films. You even have the typical gross out scenes involving throwing up and having food fights. Here Comes the Boom receives a zero in originality, but it does get points for cheap laughs now and then. If you're a fan of this light genre you will get your money's worth. Come next year you will watch the same movie again with the characters having different names and professions, but facing pretty much the same situations and telling the same jokes. You will share laughs for a couple of hours and then forget everything about it, but at least it takes your mind off things for a while.
Scott Voss (Kevin James), once a successful wrestler during his teens, is now a high school biology teacher who has seemed to have lost his purpose and vision in teaching over the past decade in the school. He is more of a slacker now and is constantly late for school. His glory days of the past when he was voted the best teacher of the school are long past him now. When the principal (Greg Germann) of the school announces that they are going to cut out extracurricular activities in the school to reduce the budget, he decides to speak up for music teacher, Marty Streb (Henry Winkler), who will be left out of a job if they can't come up with the 48,000 dollars that the music curriculum is costing the school. Scott and her colleague Bella (Salma Hayek) decide to help Marty out by coming up with ways for raising the money. Scott decides to prepare immigrants for the citizenship test in order to come up with some extra income. Here he meets a former MMA fighter from Holland named Niko (Bas Rutten) who introduces him to the MMA world. Scott realizes that if he can get into a professional fight he may win 10,000 dollars just by participating therefore he makes it his goal to become a mixed- martial arts fighter so he can raise enough money to save Streb's job.
Here Comes the Boom has a very ridiculous plot and unfortunately instead of going all the way with the satire they try to give it a Rocky like tone. It didn't really work for me and some of the actors were pretty bad. Henry Winkler was probably the funniest character in this film, while Bas Rutten tried too hard to be funny but some scenes really didn't work with him. I am not surprised I didn't like this film considering it was directed by the same guy who brought us Zookeeper, although I was a fan of his when he directed The Wedding Singer. I think he fails here by not going all the way with the satire considering how ridiculous the plot is. It will have success however with its intended audience, but I just wasn't the right target for it. It is a lazy comedy and you get exactly what you expect from it.
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