A Punchless Boxing Film: Adam Carolla’s Project Needed a Firmer Hand.
By Rick Bentley, The Fresno Bee, Calif.
Mar. 21–The idea of watching a film starring Adam Carolla, a former construction worker whose claim to fame is a cable television show that featured women jumping on trampolines, seems as appealing as a Larry the Cable Guy film festival.
Carolla has held many television and radio jobs. None have required him to show much emotion other than disappointment when his beer mug was empty. Nothing prepared him to be the star of “The Hammer,” a “Rocky”- style boxing movie about a construction worker with a dream. At least that’s a point of view Carolla can understand.
“The Hammer” never will win any awards. But it is miles ahead of such big-budget movies as “Norbit” or “Semi-Pro.” And as long as Larry the Cable Guy keeps making movies, Carolla never will be the worst actor on the big screen.
The fact that Carolla was a Golden Gloves boxer does give the movie a touch of reality. He looks like a boxer in all fight sequences. But it would have been a better movie if Carolla could have delivered as much zip once the gloves came off.
“The Hammer” sprung from an idea pitched to movie- makers by Carolla himself — an average Joe who had been a boxing sensation gets a shot at the Olympic trials 20 years later. Carolla did not pull a Sylvester Stallone and direct the production. That job went to Charles Herman-Wurmfeld, whose best-known work is “Legally Blonde 2.”
The trouble with vanity projects like this is that the star often is allowed to go off on tangents. And that is where this film suffers. Someone with a firmer hand needed to be able to say that while one or two jokes on a single subject are funny, the humor gets beaten to death by the 11th or 12th joke.
Just like boxing, filmmaking takes a firm hand.
Someone should have stepped up and told Carolla that while it was a nice gesture to hire longtime pal Oswaldo Castillo, the role of his on-screen buddy should have gone to a stronger actor.
Carolla’s a radio guy. So the comparison to Howard Stern as an actor in a movie is apropos. When Stern made his vanity project, “Private Parts,” his supporting players included Paul Giamatti and Mary McCormack. A good supporting cast can make a novice actor look better.
The biggest surprise is the direction Carolla takes with the movie. He has made a career of being outlandish and off-color on a variety of TV and radio shows. And yet this film is very PG-oriented and only gets an R rating because of language. This should surprise Carolla’s fan base, which knows him for more outlandish work.
“The Hammer” is not a bad film. It just could have been much better with the strong one-two punch of a more experienced supporting cast and tighter direction.
The reporter can be reached at rbentley@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6355.
—–
To see more of The Fresno Bee, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.fresnobee.com
Copyright (c) 2008, The Fresno Bee, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.