The Foot Fist Way

A small-town tae kwon do instructor (Danny R. McBride, who co-wrote the script with co-stars Ben Best and Jody Hill; Hill also directed) lives in a cocoon of self-delusion about his noble calling. Reportedly shot in 19 days on a starvation budget of $70,000, the movie looks every bit as rushed and cheap as that suggests—performances are uneven and sometimes self-consciously amateurish, and Brian Mandle’s photography seems to be only a couple of notches above cell-phone home movies. Still, Hill, McBride and Best supply a certain amount of guilty-pleasure fun. McBride has real comic chops, and he makes the pot-bellied, trailer-trash anti-hero surprisingly funny and—well, not exactly likeable, but interesting in a glad-he’s-not-my-neighbor sort of way. Mary Jane Bostic plays McBride’s slutty wife.