The Hammer

So I had to quiz my husband about Adam Carolla because I missed the whole Man Show thing. I think it was sometime after AbFab became the last female-oriented show to leave Comedy Central...that is before the happily heralded return of Sarah Silverman. Okay we’re obviously dancing around the hot topic of the week: have you seen the Jimmy Kimmel/Sarah Silverman/Ben Affleck/Matt Damon videos? If you don’t know what I’m talking about and/or don’t want to know what I’m talking about than you probably won’t like this movie either.
Okay so after all my in-depth research I found out that Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel used to be buds on the Man Show (bringing it back to the topic at hand). Mr. Carolla is Jerry Ferro a multi-talented ex-boxer, radio host, TV personality and now aspiring movie star is just another “underachieving” white guy who wakes up on his 40th birthday to spilled beer, maxi-pads for coffee filters and the unlikely recruitment by a boxing coach for the Olympic trials. It’s like Rocky but without the Drama: like if Rocky was a tall long-faced and lanky guy with a Nicaraguan side kick, Ozzie (Oswaldo Castillo who emphasizes that he’s NOT Mexican) and an endless stream of handy one-liners. You know the story, it’s been told a million times. Over the hill fill-in-the-blank athlete comes out of obscurity/the shadows/the gutter and triumphs against the odds. Now I haven’t seen the most recent “old guy” Rocky so I can’t fairly compare...all I can do is imagine how Stallone is working out his own poetic angst about aging. Carolla is only 40 or by the looks of him actually 40ish, an age where we can still laugh about getting older because even though things are starting to go south and hairs are popping up in weird places, with a little makeup and some wax we can still lie about being in our 30s. So this is just all fun. You gotta love a movie where the “old” 40 guy kicks the super buff black guy’s ass. Hey wait a minute. How come in all these movies, they’re always kicking the black guy’s ass? I’ll save that for another review. It’s not brilliant, it’s not riveting, it’s not as kooky and out there as the far superior little guy kicks ass fable, Nacho Libre, but it does have a similar kind of sweetness underneath and not a cloying overly sentimental sweetness...like the kind our Rocky has a tendency to fall back on.

Kudos for all the supporting players including Heather Jurgensen as Lindsay the necessary love interest. She’s a lovely looking actress, but in an unusual and hilarious way, I’d love to see more of her. And please more Constance Zimmer, she’s a tart as a really lemony glass of lemonade without enough sugar. Love her! See it...it’s fun.