Movie Review: The Foot Fist Way

Plenty of comedic actors take one very strong character and, with the backing and blessing of a big studio, turn that character into a feature film – whether we want them to or not (ahemSaturdayNightLive). And while Danny R. McBride, who plays the lead in “The Foot Fist Way,” may have the makings of a Sandler or a Farley, this movie doesn’t do justice to what looks like his talent for subtle, mockumentary-style humor.

Produced by Will Ferrell, “The Foot Fist Way” should have been hilarious. McBride plays Fred Simmons, a small-town Southern Tae Kwon Do instructor with a championship under his back belt. When Fred finds out that his wife Suzie (Mary Jane Bostic) has been cheating on him, he goes on a voyage of denial and a small amount of self-discovery that leads him away from home, face-to-face with his Hollywood idol, and back to his hometown to patch things up. In a meandering plot that never fully climaxes, the script uses the tenets of Tae Kwon Do to mark the phases of Fred’s journey.

The movie would have been a great short - but an hour and a half of watching McBride’s character not really grow or change at all is too much. While the cast as an ensemble is very good, the script relied too heavily on a main character that was almost, but not quite interesting enough to carry the movie.

"The Foot Fist Way" will be in theaters on May 30, 2008.