Argo - 3 Stars (out of four)
Score one for Adam Sandler and his Happy Gilmore productions! Ordinarily, most things Adam Sandler touches are amusing, two or three good joke stories with good hearts. Not so with Here Comes The Boom!, a truly funny, yet weirdly inspiring underdog story in the vein of Rocky, Rudy, and Hoosiers, but with a lot more laughs.
The story is about a Boston school that has fallen on hard fiscal times whose principal announces that in order to meet their budget, they must cut all extracurricular activities, chief among them the music program. Kevin James plays the once very inspiring, but now apathetic biology teacher who volunteers to try to rally the teachers to raise the necessary $48,000 to save the school and his friend, Henry Winkler's (yes, for those of you old enough to remember, THAT Henry Winkler), job. He begins to teach a basic citizenship course for immigrants who want to become citizens where he meets Dutch giant of a man who asks Kevin to tutor him. During their sessions, Kevin founds out that this guy, Niko, is an ex-MMA fighter and that fighters can make a lot of money quickly, even if they lose. He hatches a plan to train with Niko to fight in MMA fights until he can raise the money by losing. When word gets out he is doing this, hilarity and inspiration ensue. I don't want to ruin the jokes by telling them here only to say this: Unlike a lot of other films that show their best two gags in the trailer, this is chock full of them that will have you grinning ear to ear by the end.
But this is the best part. Unlike a lot of comedies today that must broadcast their jokes (including most of Adam Sandler's movies), this one is actually subtle, or as subtle as a comedy can be. It feels real, not some surreal world of pratfalls and stale routines a la The Three Stooges, Anchorman, or Deeds. Don't get me wrong, movies like that have their place and can be vastly entertaining, but when you are trying to strive for something bigger, something with a message, it becomes inappropriate and gets in its own way. I think a lot of that has a lot to do with Kevin James, whose King of Queens on TV, I will admit, I was a latecomer to he party. He has an instantl likeable everyday charisma about him that is crucial, like Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson or Bradley Cooper. This inherent likeability propels them through what would otherwise be stupid roles in less able hands. Comedy, by it's nature, is unreal and has its own rules, like a musical. People just don't act like this in real life, but by its absurdity, casts a distorted mirror up on its subject and highlights what the writer was trying to say without browbeating his audience. When done right, it can be sublimely satisfying, like this film.
The best part of the film is there are no bad guys, just bad situations to overcome. The overall culprit is not the system, teachers unions or anything else, although the film touches on both. It's life, and how it throws us a curve occassionally. How we deal with these curves is just as important than overcoming them, and we just may get a few victories along the way. But that doesn't mean the way will be easy, or even if we will win in the first place. But to persevere, that is what's important. This movie has all of that and more. Go see it if you need a lift or are discouraged today. You won't be disappointed.
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