A long day ended last night with a screening of The Hammer, radio personality Adam Carolla’s leading man big screen debut. Despite the swirl of real world irritations, I generally dug the movie on its own low-fi terms, though I confess an affinity for Carolla’s trademark saltiness, an acquired taste to be sure.
The story has its roots in the radioman and former The Man Show co-host’s real-life rise from working-class anonymity, with Carolla playing Jerry, a just-turned-40 Los Angeles carpenter who moonlights teaching boxing class at Bodies in Motion, and gets a new shot at both love and the big time, in the form of a public defender pupil and a shot at the Olympic trials, respectively. The romantic stuff of course doesn’t really play (Kissing Jessica Stein multi-hyphenate Heather Juergensen, above right, tries gamely, but Carolla is all knees-and-elbows when it comes to flirtatious banter, even of the wiseacre variety), the production design is super-threadbare and director Charles Herman-Wurmfeld, also of Kissing Jessica Stein, isn’t a great match for the material, over-relying on ADR fixes and jump-cuts to spotlight his leading man. Still, the movie has an indefatigability of spirit that I admire, and it’s also completely genuine in its unbowed, non-held-tongue affection for multiculturalism and the working class, something rare in movies, big or small.
The trailer for the film, meanwhile, highlights at least some of this vaguely politically incorrect backtalk, which isn’t the main thrust of The Hammer but is among its high points — stuff like Jerry’s aside to his friend and fellow day-laborer Ozzie’s family (“You guys seem to all love Nicaragua so much, except for the part where you risked your lives not to live there anymore”), and his snappish interjection when a fellow boxer questions why he has to train with an old white dude (“Yeah coach — when is the black man going to get a fair shake in the fight game?”). More will follow in the coming weeks, including a possible interview with Carolla; The Hammer opens March 21, from International Film Circuit. For more information, click here.