Ascendant funnyman Danny McBride stars in this comedy about a small town martial arts instructor struggling with a couple life crises, an amiable but meandering tale that wears out both its threadbare premise and welcome long before the end of its running time. The micro-budgeted The Foot Fist Way — its title the literal translation of tae kwon do — shot in three weeks as a self-financed feature, premiered at Sundance in 2006, and saw the addition of new material after Will Ferrell's production company finally picked up the film for distribution via Paramount Vantage. In much the same manner Napoleon Dynamite did in 2004, The Foot Fist Way angles to position itself as the low-fi, counter-programming alternative to clamorous summer genre product. But middling word-of-mouth and the relatively low current profile of McBride — who costarred in last fall's Hot Rod, and appears in this August's Tropic Thunder — likely won't be enough to push domestic returns into eight figures.



Set in small town North Carolina, the movie centers around tae kwon do instructor Fred Simmons (McBride, above left), who owns and operates a strip mall martial arts business, and lectures his students, adults and kids alike, about focus, self-control and perseverance. Fred's wife Susan (Mary Jane Bostic), though, doesn't respect what he does, and starts to cheat on him. This rocks Fred's world, and things don't get much better when Fred eventually meets his idol, competition champion turned preening, entitled movie star Chuck “The Truck” Wallace (Ben Best), and finds his hero not all he's imagined.

Somewhat interestingly, and to its credit, The Foot Fist Way doesn't infantalize Fred or portray him as a loser for his occupation. The script, though, co-written by McBride, Best and actor-director Jody Hill, never locates a convincing, persuasively amusing tone. It isn't rooted in a specificity of character, and none of the supporting players have the arcs or depth of quirk that comprised Napoleon Dynamite's amusing background tapestry. Whereas that film — another zonked comedy centered around a strange, headstrong character — located something approaching universality in its portrayal of seething nerd petulance, The Foot Fist Way never particularly seems anchored to anything other than its makers' passing fancies. It floats, and flits by. It happens. And then it's over.

McBride, though, brings to bear plenty of his wry, burly charisma. The roundabout manner in which Fred assays his problems (indicating irritation with his wife's behavior, he leaves a rambling phone message, in part saying, “Wondering why you haven't called, I'm a little ticked off... and super-pissed, so... change it”) attests to the fact that everyone is the star of their own private narrative. With that canted cadence and steeled self-confidence, McBride acquits himself scene to scene. The performances of the mostly non-professional actors appearing as Fred's students, meanwhile, lend the movie a nice sheen of realism with respect to its setting. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here. (Paramount Vantage, R, 87 minutes)