The Hammer

"The Hammer" starring Adam Carolla is a sentimental and sweet story of reclaiming one's greatness. Directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld, "The Hammer" plays like an independent film, mostly because it is. Kevin Hench wrote the screenplay for "The Hammer" from a story by Adam Carolla. Consequently, the movie has an autobiographical feel. Before Carolla became a morning talk-radio star or host of "Loveline" with Dr. Drew, he was a carpenter and boxing instructor. In fact he was Jimmy Kimmel's boxing coach. In "The Hammer" Adam Carolla plays 40 year-old Jerry Ferro, a journeyman carpenter, who works odd construction jobs around Los Angeles County. His good buddy is barely understandable Nicaraguan immigrant Oswaldo (Oswaldo Castillo), and his partner in construction. Jerry also teaches boxing at a local sports club.

One day after being fired from his job, Jerry spars an up and coming professional boxer as a favor. Jerry takes a beating, but drops the fighter with a solid left. This catches the attention of Coach Eddie Bell (Tom Quin). Bell enrolls Jerry into trying out for the Olympic Boxing Team, through regional competition. 20 years ago, Jerry walked away from a shot at the Olympic Team as a promising young amateur. So now at 40 years-old and fired from his job this may be Jerry's last shot. However, it marks the end of his relationship with suffering girlfriend Nicole (Constance Zimmer). Jerry finds out that he is contending for the light-heavyweight spot against young talented Robert Brown (brash Harold House Moore). Robert has a bright career in front of himself, while Jerry struggles to recapture the greatness of his youth. But Jerry is smart and has great heart. Also Bell's intentions are not entirely transparent.

Things begin to look up. Jerry musters up the courage to ask cute and smart Lindsay (sweet and charming Heather Juergensen) from his boxing class to go out on a date. Swamped public defender Lindsay agrees to a "day" date. Jerry and Lindsay spend a hilarious day at the La Brea Tar Pits. Carolla and Juergensen have a hysterical and natural chemistry. A perfect foil to Jerry's smart ass, Lindsay is solid and unflinching. There is a touching and funny scene when Lindsay kisses Jerry good night. She would have sex with Jerry, but Jerry has a big fight coming up and she doesn't want to "deplete" his chi. Their relationship is a touching surprise in "The Hammer".

Okay, "The Hammer" has formulaic "Rocky" charm and predictability. You have the requisite cathartic fight scene. However, it is its quirkiness and engaging natural banter that makes "The Hammer" so bitter sweet and heart felt. Adam Carolla has an easy and natural charm. He is great at embodying the smart ass and gentle soul of Jerry. As Lindsay, Heather Juergensen is the amazing combination of goofy and sexy. As Lindsay she plays it very smart, just flying under the radar. Like Carolla, she has an easy and comfortable presence. Harold House Moore is funny and charismatic as Robert. Moore also brings a refreshing humanity to the role.

"The Hammer" is sentimental, strangely comfortable, and refreshing. We all pull for Adam Carolla's Jerry as he hysterically and courageously reclaims his vestige of greatness. See "The Hammer". You'll be surprised and charmed.

For being such a low budget film I was very surprised at how good this film was. Just goes to show that money doesn't make a great film; good story, good acting, lots of funny one-liners and a heart-warming plot do.

I definitely recommend that you watch this!

***FILLER*** aka blah, blah........

I hope Adam Coralla puts together another film. Its too bad this one went straight to DVD with little to no publicity. I've seen numerous films with huge budgets and tons of publicity which were absolutely terrible...........

I rented this last night from Blockbuster, upon reading the comments on IMDb. I had been eyeing it on my past few visits, and finally decided to give it a shot. Yep, it was good, and I was not surprised. Adam Corolla is a smart man, he came up with a decent story and had somebody write a decent script for it. While I'm not a huge fan, I like his deadpan humor quite a bit, and he uses it to full effect in his movie. He doesn't play a character he essentially is himself, and it works, he doesn't try to act himself into something he's not. What I was surprised about is his athletic agility, I didn't realize he was so athletic, or did he have stand ins? I'll give it a second watch and pay more attention to that. All in all, nice simple story, no special effects, just a good low budget movie about human beings and a somewhat surprising ending that I won't spoil. Not that it is in my top ten movies of all time, but maybe my recent top ten. Go ahead, give it a watch and enjoy it. I did. Sometimes simplicity is the best policy, I hope Adam will do another one and keep it simple again...

One liners galore, but what else would you expect from Adam Carolla he's like the king of one liners. So many times in this film another character says something and you can just feel a one liner coming and bam there it is, and for the most part it's hilarious. Especially a scene at the La brea Tar Pits, the hits just kept on coming line after line just kept getting funnier and funnier, I do wish that more of the film would have let Adam loose like that. Even though those moments are the highlights of the film that is not all there is to it, it has a unique story with dare I say a message and a believable bond between it's characters. Carolla could have easily have delivered his lines and just delivered a standard comedic performance and left it at that, but in some ways he really develops a great character who is unique and multifaceted. OK, maybe that's a little too generous but he does do a good job as does his supporting cast. Yes it's a simple film, yes it's a simple plot, but some times it's the characters from those simple stories that we can relate to the best.

Adam has commented on his show about the slight insult associated with people giving him good reviews and compliments with qualifying comments like "actually good" and "surprisingly funny", and followed with, "No, really, its REALLY actually good". Although I don't think Adam should take too much offense as I believe their surprise is a reflection on the low expectations of comedic films recently as much as those who may be surprised that they like Adam Carolla more than they originally thought, as Adam creates a character who is easy to relate to in a film that is easily accessible to many people. And the reason it is accessible is that it is a good movie with a good script and good acting and good jokes. It does not need to rely on what Hollywood considers a proved formula or proved actor.

The Hammer is a good movie. I know that sounds like a generic compliment but in my opinion it is really hard to find a smart comedy that is also a genuinely good movie nowadays. The story is original. The tone is easy going and is confident in it's purpose and saves you the pain of sitting through a comedy that tries too hard to be funny. This is not the best movie you have seen all year, but it will definitely entertain, make you laugh, make you think and you will leave the theater feeling like your $7-10 you spent was well worth it. The material is laugh out loud funny with some of the dry wit, creative complaints and analytical commentary on life that fans of Adam are used to. My wife, who is not a big fan of Adam, loved the movie and thought it was well written. She also enjoyed Oswaldo "Ozzie" Castillo, who is charming and funny as his Nicaraguan friend. The role came naturally for him as Ozzie is Adam's friend in real life and worked construction with him back in his pre-celebrity days.

It seems like all of the really funny and smart comedy has always come from someone who is given a blank slate and allowed to do more or less whatever they want without much interference or censorship. By this I am referring to shows such as Family Guy, South Park, Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld and movies such as Anchorman, Ace Ventura, The Jerk, Swingers, Clerks, etc. What all of these have in common is that they start out being small enough and done cheap enough so that TV/studio executives don't care enough to get overly involved in. Or in some cases the star is proved to be funny in stand-up or TV but they are given a shot to do what they want in their first movie as long as it is done cheap to see how it goes. Either way, they are allowed to be original, daring and edgy without the people funding it insisting on the "safe" formula. The catch is that because they start out small, they need to fight to get a good footing and gain an audience. The Hammer is this movie that needs to fight for the audience it deserves for Adam Carolla.

For those familiar with Adam Carolla and his radio show, it is exactly what all the good reviews and discussion on the show lead you to believe about the movie. For those of you who don't know, Adam paid to distribute the movie himself due to the problems he ran into with distributors who passed on a movie that does not fit into a cookie-cutter formula. And we have all seen what "proven" box office comedic actors have yielded lately. There is a mile-long list of crap put out by the likes of the Adam Sandler/SNL crew, Dane Cook and the Wayans Brothers milking the Scary Movie formula as many times as the studio will let them. One of the main reasons distributors passed on the movie was that it was appealing to "too many" people and could not be easily marketed to a "target audience", which ironically is a negative for them. This is true, as many people young and old, mean and women, were in the theater and everyone was laughing. Half of the audience actually clapped at the end which is a rarity nowadays.

Therefore this movie needs the support of a good first week and word-of-mouth advertising to gain a foothold and be a stick-it-to-the-man indie movie victory. If movies like The Hammer don't get support it deserves, it is just more justification for studios and distributors not to support anything beyond the usual repetitive crap you see in theaters.

So do yourself a favor and go see it in theaters, and if you are reading this after it has already gone to DVD then pick it up and check it out. You will definitely see a good and worthwhile movie and one of two things will happen. A) You can see it early then tell others about it and be one of those people who "discover" a good thing early and can tell people "I saw it back when..." once it becomes a hit, like a band you discovered early and watched rise to stardom. Or B) You can hold it as one of those nice little "secrets" and you can be part of an exclusive club of people with good taste, much like a good Italian restaurant not many people know about and you are kind of glad people don't know so it can be "yours", and you can always get a seat without waiting.