The Foot Fist Way
Directed by Jody Hill
Coming so soon after David Mamet’s highbrow martial arts film Redbelt, the proudly lowbrow martial arts comedy The Foot Fist Way seems like an unpretentious corrective. During a Tae Kwon Do academy’s summary demonstration, dojo-hero Fred Simmons explains the meaning of belt colors as Mamet never bothered to do, but prosaically: “The Yellow belt is for the Earth, Green is for plants, Blue is for the Sky, Red is for Danger, cautioning students to use control.” Then comes a lame but narcissistic demonstration by the loutish cult-figure star of a movie titled Seven Rings of Pain.
Laughing yet? The humor in The Foot Fist Way, co-written by lead actor Danny McBride and director Jody Hill, is so far from Judd Apatow’s SNL-slick formula that it takes a while to adjust to its different, regional authenticity. Boastful Fred Simmons (played by McBride) is one of the legion of American blue-collar triflers. Each example of his self-deprecating egotism reveals a new layer of working-class American infantilism and folly. Other than intimidating his young, old, female, etc. academy students, then being cuckolded and getting his ass kicked by his cult-film hero, Fred’s signature gesture is digging his pants out of his ass crack.
You know this guy, admit it. The surprise of The Foot Fist Way is that it makes hating Fred impossible, simply because you really do know him. Fred is the first real-person movie character to epitomize the low-level, self-justifying, self-aggrandizing comedy of Homer Simpson and Family Guy’s Peter. (This perspective become clearer at the half-hour point when the irate parent of an academy student tells him, “You are an idiot!”)
The Foot Fist Way is a grungy-looking feature debut, but it has the most idiosyncratic perspective on American living since Napoleon Dynamite. If it feels like a work-in-progress, that’s because Hill and McBride, alumni of the North Carolina School of the Arts—which also motivated George Washington and Shotgun Stories—are working out a credible and distinct representation of class and sass. (I’ll take its hotel after-party putting a snide rock band on its ass over the Superbad beer party any day.)
It turns out Fred, with his arrogant mustache and gut, is more believable than the suave, chivalrous fantasy figure Chiwetel Ejiofor played in Redbelt. Fred resembles the eternally put-upon Ralph Kramden. For all his guff, he seeks “to build a more peaceable world.” Fred’s solipsistic, self-amusing sense of humor is more authentic than TV’s condescending (to all) My Name is Earl, which doesn’t spring from reality but from high-paid professionals’ habitual condescension to anyone who doesn’t live near Malibu or Central Park.
What Judd Apatow and his ilk have done to modern comedy is loathsome, but The Foot Fist Way signifies the most original comic vision since Hot Fuzz. Although Jody Hill isn’t yet near Edgar Wright’s proficiency, he’s worth watching. The Foot Fist Way’s empathy represents an alternative vision uncorrupted by the usual film-culture snobbery. Some of the most interesting recent films belong to this unheralded category: From Home of the Brave to Delta Farce, The Ten to Shotgun Stories to Battle for Haditha, they require film lovers to search outside the indie box.
Directed by Jody Hill
Coming so soon after David Mamet’s highbrow martial arts film Redbelt, the proudly lowbrow martial arts comedy The Foot Fist Way seems like an unpretentious corrective. During a Tae Kwon Do academy’s summary demonstration, dojo-hero Fred Simmons explains the meaning of belt colors as Mamet never bothered to do, but prosaically: “The Yellow belt is for the Earth, Green is for plants, Blue is for the Sky, Red is for Danger, cautioning students to use control.” Then comes a lame but narcissistic demonstration by the loutish cult-figure star of a movie titled Seven Rings of Pain.
Laughing yet? The humor in The Foot Fist Way, co-written by lead actor Danny McBride and director Jody Hill, is so far from Judd Apatow’s SNL-slick formula that it takes a while to adjust to its different, regional authenticity. Boastful Fred Simmons (played by McBride) is one of the legion of American blue-collar triflers. Each example of his self-deprecating egotism reveals a new layer of working-class American infantilism and folly. Other than intimidating his young, old, female, etc. academy students, then being cuckolded and getting his ass kicked by his cult-film hero, Fred’s signature gesture is digging his pants out of his ass crack.
You know this guy, admit it. The surprise of The Foot Fist Way is that it makes hating Fred impossible, simply because you really do know him. Fred is the first real-person movie character to epitomize the low-level, self-justifying, self-aggrandizing comedy of Homer Simpson and Family Guy’s Peter. (This perspective become clearer at the half-hour point when the irate parent of an academy student tells him, “You are an idiot!”)
The Foot Fist Way is a grungy-looking feature debut, but it has the most idiosyncratic perspective on American living since Napoleon Dynamite. If it feels like a work-in-progress, that’s because Hill and McBride, alumni of the North Carolina School of the Arts—which also motivated George Washington and Shotgun Stories—are working out a credible and distinct representation of class and sass. (I’ll take its hotel after-party putting a snide rock band on its ass over the Superbad beer party any day.)
It turns out Fred, with his arrogant mustache and gut, is more believable than the suave, chivalrous fantasy figure Chiwetel Ejiofor played in Redbelt. Fred resembles the eternally put-upon Ralph Kramden. For all his guff, he seeks “to build a more peaceable world.” Fred’s solipsistic, self-amusing sense of humor is more authentic than TV’s condescending (to all) My Name is Earl, which doesn’t spring from reality but from high-paid professionals’ habitual condescension to anyone who doesn’t live near Malibu or Central Park.
What Judd Apatow and his ilk have done to modern comedy is loathsome, but The Foot Fist Way signifies the most original comic vision since Hot Fuzz. Although Jody Hill isn’t yet near Edgar Wright’s proficiency, he’s worth watching. The Foot Fist Way’s empathy represents an alternative vision uncorrupted by the usual film-culture snobbery. Some of the most interesting recent films belong to this unheralded category: From Home of the Brave to Delta Farce, The Ten to Shotgun Stories to Battle for Haditha, they require film lovers to search outside the indie box.
