"Here Comes the Boom" (Guardian 09/11/12)

Here Comes the Boom (12A) 105 mins **

The latest Sandler-enabled vehicle for human Weeble Kevin James is a knockabout knock-off of last year’s Warrior: James’s unlikely biology teacher turns MMA fighter to save his school’s cutback-threatened music program. The Wedding Singer’s Frank Coraci retains an endearing fondness for funny-faced bit-parts, but it’s fundamentally formulaic in construction and mediocre in execution: basically a pretext for James to take further hits to the plums, coupled to some half-meant children-are-our-future sentiment. Historical footnote: it may be the first feature in which Salma Hayek takes a cup size smaller than her love interest’s.  

Here Comes the Boom opens in cinemas nationwide today.