Here Comes the Boom: Family film on taking a stand

“Here Comes the Boom” is a film about a school that is in finan­cial dis­ar­ray and needs to cut extracur­ric­u­lar pro­grams in order to meet their bud­getary needs for the com­ing year. Mr. Voss (Kevin James) is a teacher that barely has a grasp on his job as he seems to be los­ing sight of why he became a teacher and more impor­tantly, how to pre­pare a class­room full of chil­dren for their futures. Mr. Streb (Henry Win­kler) is the head of the music pro­gram which is more of a pas­sion for him than a career. His per­sonal life is also very full of music instruc­tion and help­ing less for­tu­nate stu­dents get instru­ments that he finds and repairs on his own time.

The super­in­ten­dent calls an after­school meet­ing to inform the fac­ulty of the cuts and Voss is out­raged when the music pro­gram is on the chop­ping block. He ral­lies the other teach­ers in his cor­ner to help raise a large sum of money so that Streb can keep his job. After he real­izes the lack of enthu­si­asm from his peers he decides to do what­ever it takes in order to raise the nec­es­sary funds so that his friend can keep his job. Voss takes on the task by him­self and enters the ring with some sketchy fight­ers in seedy under­ground are­nas after he finds out that even the los­ing fight­ers win a decent sum of money.

Let me begin by say­ing that I have been wait­ing three years to see some­one punch, James in the face after mak­ing me watch “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.” He is a very funny stand-up come­dian and an okay actor, but that had to be said. Now that we have that out of the way, I would like to state the won­der­ful job that this cast did at mak­ing me enjoy the film. The story was strong enough to hold its own, but when you throw in zany char­ac­ters and a few slap­stick jokes it becomes a more inter­est­ing tale. The con­stant ban­ter between Voss and Bella (Salma Hayek) are some of the movies best writ­ing. He is con­stantly get­ting pum­meled in the fights and seeks Bella (the school nurse) for con­so­la­tion while mak­ing con­stant attempts to sub­ju­gate her into going on a date with him despite get­ting denied at every pass.

This movie really came out at an oppor­tune time. In many ways it feels like a pro­pa­ganda film with all of the eco­nom­i­cal strug­gles that plague our school sys­tems. It seems like every time I go to the polls there is another levy that HAS to pass or the school sys­tem will cease to exist. “Here Comes the Boom” illus­trated these con­cerns in a radi­ant light that really hit home with me. It may make you think twice before check­ing the “NO” box on the next ballot.

“Here Comes the Boom” may not be a con­tender for movie of the year, or even one that makes it to my per­sonal col­lec­tion, but it was enjoy­able on a few lev­els. You may be best to wait for mati­nee prices, but take the whole fam­ily and teach your kids about the virtues of tak­ing a stand.

Show­times for Fri­day at Rave Motion Pic­tures Polaris 18, 1071 Gem­ini Place: 11:15 a.m., 2:15 p.m., 5 p.m., 8 p.m. and 10:45 p.m.

Posted by Scott Hall on Oct 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.