Fist Fight

A strong contender for both 'Worst Film' and 'Least Funny Comedy' of 2017.

It’s only February but already it might be possible to name both the worst film and least funny comedy of 2017.

Fist Fight, starring Charlie Day and Ice Cube, is a monument to stupidity. Its characters are amongst the thinnest and most derivative ever constructed, its plot is simultaneously ludicrous and entirely dull and its capacity for comedy exists almost solely as outtakes in the final credits. The film’s first-time screenwriters rely exclusively on a three-tiered approach of dick jokes, incessant swearing and a female teacher’s desire to have sex with a minor to fill their 91 minutes of tripe, forever backed by the high-pitched stammering whine of Day’s mild-mannered English teacher ‘Andy Campbell’.

Story wise, Fist Fight takes place on ‘muck up day’ in a US public school, where the students run riot, the teachers are powerless, apathetic or both, and the school board is laying off staff to meet budgetary requirements. When Day and Cube’s characters clash over an incident in which Cube takes to a student’s desk with a fire axe, Cube challenges the diminutive Day to a fist fight in the school yard after class to settle things once and for all. That none of the faculty, campus security or police department demonstrate any interest in properly addressing either of the axe-on-student incident OR the imminent crimes of: assault and battery, disturbing the peace, affray or disorderly conduct, somehow represents the least implausible part of this entire abysmal experience.

Alongside Day and Cube are various actors of note in roles that, quite simply, aren’t. Tracy Morgan plays an incompetent sports coach, Christine Hendricks plays a butterfly-knife wielding French teacher and Jillian Bell plays a meth-addicted guidance counsellor determined to get herself some ’teenis’ (teenage penis). The whole conceit is so laughably unlaughable, it’s astounding the script ever caught a studio’s attention, let alone the actors who signed on to make it.