Star Rating:

Here Comes The Boom

Director: Frank Coraci

Actors: Kevin James, Henry Winkler

Release Date: Monday 30th November -0001

Genre(s): Factual

Running time: 105 minutes

Well, it was never going to be Warrior but that doesn't excuse the awful predictability of Here Comes The Boom, an underdog comedy that takes its name from P.O.D's rousing number. The only real surprise here is that it's taken until now to make a UFC comedy.

Kevin James is a biology teacher who has lost his zest for the job. When the school announces cutbacks that include Henry Winkler's music class, James offers to enter UFC bouts to raise the necessary dough and secure his friend's job. With the help of Bas Rutten, the Dutch guy in his citizenship class - James also teaches citizenship classes in the evening which allows the script to poke fun at Mexicans - he sets out to lose every fight and reap the ten grand entry money. However, he gets sick of taking beatings and starts to put it about...

The opening scene has James snoring loudly in bed: he wakes up, eyes the alarm clock, sees that he's late and races to work. This has been used so often to call it a cliché is a cliché and that's as fresh and original that this mixed martial arts comedy gets. Smelling the ending from here, in an effort to raise the stakes Here Comes The Boom dreams up some formulaic subplots: the Asian-American girl in James' class is suddenly a music enthusiast who is forbidden by her father from singing while Salma Hayek's love interest is not interested but then, suddenly, she is.

James works hard to squeeze some jokes out of a script he co-penned with Allan Loeb (Just Go With It, The Dilemma) and Rock Rueben (Zookeeper) but they can only come up with the odd smirk (Mexican jokes not included). Director Frank Coraci (The Wedding Singer, Click) doesn't come up with anything interesting visually for the fight scenes.

However, the final fight is the stuff fight movies are made of and Krzysztof Soszynski looks meaner than any opponent Rocky came up with. Fans of UFC will get a bang out of the familiar faces on show too but this is a poor show.