Movie Review: The Foot Fist Way

"How many slices have you had, Julio?
How 'bout you've had enough."

Quotes like this one and others mark the excellent dry humor that is found in "The Foot Fist Way". This 2006 low budget comedy is presented by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. You have probably seen their collaborations before in sketches such as "The Landlord." "The Foot Fist Way" is directed by Jody Hill and features the breakout performance of Danny McBride (Eastbound and Down, Tropic Thunder, Pineapple Express, etc).

The plot follows Fred Simmons (McBride), a self-obsessed Taekwondo instructor and his exploits in his North Carolina dojo. He considers himself to be the "Master of the Demo" but is continuously disrespected by his unfaithful wife. Simmons is quite pathetic and not particularly good at his craft. His right hand man is a short fat kid named Julio and their interactions alone are pretty funny. The film tracks Simmons as he meets his martial arts idol, Chuck "The Truck" Wallace, and his efforts to re-gain his self confidence.

"The Foot Fist Way" has all the makings of a cult classic. It's style is in the same vein as "Napoleon Dynamite", but much better. It did not reach a level of mass scale distribution but I feel that if it did there would be many followers. There are a number of hilarious scenes in this film. My favorite though is Simmons' lambasting of a potential client. An obese man enters his office to inquire about enrolling in his class. Simmons gives him his spiel, but the man concludes that it is too expensive. After the price is dropped the man still refuses to join. Fred Simmons goes on to tell the obese man that he entered the dojo with no intention of joining. In this tirade he insults the man's weight and his manhood; all explained with a smug smirk on his face. Some other quality moments include his assault on children, his failed pass at a female student, and his speech to his wife in which he states his wish for her hair to turn to dog shit.

My point in reviewing this film is twofold. For one, I feel that it is a sleeper in the comedy genre and more people need to be up on this. Secondly, as I have explained before, I don't have much else to do. One reason that I like "The Foot Fist Way" is that it is straight funny from start to finish. The nonsense to does not take a backseat to a sappy love story or some other background crap (i.e. Wedding Crashers). That is the type of comedy that I would direct, only mine would be much funnier. So if you see this title, pick it up. In the very least you will be able to extract some hilarious quotes.