Do yall really want it?

Rating: 7/10 (6 February 2013)

Through his last few film roles, Kevin James has put a spell on me. His controlled goofiness, innocuous sweetness, and charming "everyman" persona make him at least likable for roughly ninety minutes. Perhaps it is the tough times endured in our world, or my cynicism winding down, but through an unexplainable force I enjoyed Frank Coraci's Here Comes the Boom perfectly on its own merits. It delights with comedy and commentary, moves with its undertones, and achieves satisfaction without being too crass or too manipulative.
Kevin James is Scott Voss, a biology teacher for a high school in deteriorating shape financially. Budget cutbacks proposed by one of the board members shows reverting back to salaries of the previous year, financial conservation, and the elimination of the school's music program. Voss, who seemed to be often lackadaisical and unmotivated during school hours, is reminded of the music director, Marty (Henry Winkler), an aging man who confides in him when he realizes that his wife is pregnant. He decides to take a stand for Marty and raise the $48,000 needed to save the music program by taking up mixed martial arts, when he discovers from a friend that just losing a professional match grants you $10,000, where winning grants you a whopping $50,000.
Voss, who also teaches a citizenship class to cheery, optimistic immigrants, takes lessons from Holland-native Niko (real-life UFC heavyweight Bas Rutten), and is driven by the spirit and beauty of co-worker Bella Flores (Salma Hayek), who admires his doughy-self for pushing through in efforts to get a date with her. And so the odyssey begins, with Voss attempting to fight in numerous events, receiving money, and hoping to save the music program before the end of the year.
I just finished reviewing Rob Cohen's Alex Cross, a polar-opposite from Here Comes the Boom. I introduced my critique by saying, "We've seen Alex Cross before, in numerous other detective films, and even if we haven't, or can't quite recall where, somehow we arrive at the expected conclusion in our heads roughly twenty-five minutes before the characters of the film do." The same statement applies for Here Comes the Boom. This story isn't original, subversive, or unpredictable, yet there's an incandescent charm to its story and a motivation to exercise full potential rather than be a lazy slog through screenplay odds and ends. This is the kind of entertainment that doesn't burden us, beat a moral over our heads, provide us with sappy emotional manipulation, and doesn't feel like it's taking away one-hundred and two minutes away from us in a criminal act.
Kevin James' previous film was Zookeeper, directed by the same Frank Coraci. Despite the same well-meaning efforts being present there, its humor derived from mainly farcical concepts such as James' collapsing or the fact that him and a gorilla straight from the zoo were dining out at Applebee's. It was forgettable and almost entirely unremarkable. Here Comes the Boom, on the other hand, is sweeter and more concerned with humor deriving from wordplay or character relations. The matches between Voss and his competitors are not played for laughs or even petty remorse. They are fierce, slickly captured, and quite entertaining.
Here Comes the Boom isn't that will be remembered as more than acceptable genre-fare and, in a sense, that's the way it should be. To overblow it to anything more is to completely over-compensate its worth as a film. It's not something to hold on the highest step on the pedestal. It's a film to appreciate once, maybe twice, and then move on. There are better pictures in this same genre lurking out there. Yet there are worse ones. Way worse ones.
Starring: Kevin James, Salma Hayek, and Henry Winkler. Directed by: Frank Coraci.