When he got off the phone, I was curious to know what had so captivated him, other than staying out late with Dad and a trip to his favorite burrito joint. But that scene had our theater riveted, including my 9-year-old son.Īfterward, in fact, my boy called his mom during our drive home and reported that Here Comes the Boom was one of the greatest movies he’d ever seen. Herb Dean would never referee again if he let a fight go on like he does in the climactic scene. There also are cameos by UFC figures such as Jason “Mayhem” Miller, Mark Muñoz and Joe Rogan. MMA fans are treated to lots of fight scenes, which are exhilarating despite being no more plausible than Rocky. If Kevin James could shift from actor to fighter as convincingly as Bas Rutten goes the other way, the former King of Queens star would be wearing a UFC crown. His disco street fighting class - “Knee to the face! Victory dance!” - is an aerobic classic. The former MMA star, a UFC heavyweight champion more than a decade ago, takes his portrayal of a fighter-turned-trainer to its comic extreme without going over the top. The true revelation in the cast, however, is Bas Rutten. Once this docile music teacher becomes a cornerman in the MMA scheme, he transforms into something approximating the Grand Wizard of Wrestling. This is a funny movie, thanks in large part to James but also to Winkler, who’s not your father’s Arthur Fonzarelli here. More than anything, though, the tears shed are from laughter. At times it’s from the poignancy of a film built around an uplifting commitment to what’s valuable in life. Or should I say caricature development? From evil school administrators to bored students and even more blasé faculty, there’s so much broad-brush painting here that the movie could have been written and directed by Benjamin Moore.īut Boom never stops fighting until it’s closed in on you and has you in tears. Its launching point is bogged down by all of the vacuous trappings of Hollywood drivel in plot and character development. What reason? Well, let’s just say this film is no Citizen Kane. Early on, I’d been as horrified as the woman behind me, though for a different reason. This crowd was unabashedly invested in the moment, and that included Ms. It was a totally unrealistic moment (unless you happened to have seen a woozy Cheick Kongo do much the same thing in a UFC fight last year as Pat Barry was moving in for the kill), but that didn’t stop the theater from erupting in cheers. This was the lens through which I was watching the movie until, nearly an hour in, James’ character - a former collegiate wrestler who was taking his lumps on the minor-league MMA circuit - suddenly changed his luck with a wild haymaker that floored a fighter he had no business being in the cage with. Are these moviegoers going to end up choking on their popcorn? Surely a lot of MMA fans will flock to their local megaplexes, but sitting right alongside them will be unsuspecting folks who’ve simply seen James on the marquee - and Salma Hayek and Henry Winkler, too - and bought a ticket. This got me to wondering what the reaction will be once Boom opens in theaters nationwide on Friday.
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