Charlie Day plays a mild-mannered high school English teacher named Andy Campbell, who inadvertently finds himself challenged to an after-school fist fight after he rats on imposing history teacher Ron Strickland (Cube) and gets him fired. What follows is Andy doing everything he can, to either get the fight called off or Strickland indisposed.
This film provided examples of:(Trivia should go here and VMNV should go here)
- Actor Allusion:
- Strickland's "fuck the police" line was a popular phrase from Ice Cube during his NWA career.
- He also says, "you got knocked the fuck out."
- Adults Are Useless: With the exception of Strickland (who takes his job seriously, albeit too much), every adult is either spineless, incompetent, or both. Campbell himself manages to avoid this trope after growing a spine.
- Age-Inappropriate Art: Campbell's daughter Ally's talent show routine she wanted his help with is an uncensored performance of "I Don't Fuck with You" by Big Sean directed at her bully Trisha. Surprised at first, Campbell just rolls along with it while Ally's teacher desperately tries to literally pull the plug on them.
- An Aesop: Words have consequences; weaseling out of a situation can make it worse.
- Apologizes a Lot: Campbell, initially.
- Ax-Crazy: Miss Monet, who wants to cut Andy's face off after a misunderstanding between him and a student. Even Strickland is put off by her.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Strickland wins the fight, though because his victory assuaged his anger, he acts kinder towards Campbell and the film ends with the two on good terms.
- Brick Joke: A lot actually.
- At the beginning of the film, Strickland busts two students who replaced a prized baseball bat in the trophy stand with a laptop playing porn, and orders them to put it back. During their fight, Campbell attempts to use the bat to defend himself against Strickland... only to find it super-glued to the stand.
- The two student that mow a penis on the football field. Each time the film focuses back on it, it looks like it's ejaculating.
- Early in the film, Strickland manages to save Andy from getting spray painted by booby trapped hallway. Later Andy ends up dragged through it when the students rig a trap to have a horse snare his legs. And near the climax, Strickland and he end up having to wade through the leftover grease in the hall while they continue their fight.
- The student that Andy finds masturbating in the boys room stall. He's still in there when Andy and Strickland's fight spill into the restroom and gets flattened by the door stall crashing into him.Student: I still came, motherfuckers!
- Butt-Monkey:
- Campbell. He wastes thousands of dollars buying two MacBook Pros for other people, gets picked on by students in or not in his class, and is on Strickland's bad side.
- Principal Tyler is defined as very unlucky as soon as the movie introduces him.Principal Tyler: I've got a goddamn mariachi band following me around wherever I go! (scene cuts to band playing outside his office)
- Cluster F-Bomb: The entire film is littered to the brim with "F" words from start to finish, but the topping on the cake is Ally singing "I Don't Fuck with You" at a talent show, in which the word is said dozens of times, in the frame of a single minute.
- Combat Pragmatist: Campbell knows he can't last in a straight up fight against Strickland, so he uses whatever he can get his hands on as a weapon.
- Curb Stomp Cushion: Campbell gets knocked out by Strickland, but he manages to get several blows in first.
- Dirty Coward:
- Campbell not wanting to fight Strickland is understandable, but the absurd lengths that he will go to to avoid the fight (i.e., framing Strickland for drug possession and setting him up for a prison fight) really do not paint him in a sympathetic light.
- The school's security guard who never does his job because he's afraid of getting hurt.
- The Dreaded: Everyone at the school, student and teacher alike, is scared of Strickland due to his violent Hair-Trigger Temper.
- Everybody Has Standards:
- Strickland gets legitimately creeped out when Miss Monet offers him her butterfly knife for the fight.
- The prank where Campbell is pulled by the horse is preceded by one of the pranksters growing genuinely concerned about his state of mind.
- Establishing Character Moment: Strickland intimidating the students into putting the championship bat back in the trophy case.
- Frame-Up: Campbell plants (what he believes to be) Molly into Strickland's bag in hopes of getting him arrested and taken off campus. However, the police dogs are unable to sniff the "drugs" out and Campbell ends up getting them both arrested. The "Molly" turns out to be aspirin.
- Flipping the Bird: Out of all the foul-mouthed characters in the movie it's Ally, Campbell's sweet and soft-spoken daughter, who does this to the local Alpha Bitch in the talent show.Ally: Who's the loser now, Trisha? Bully this, bitch! (mic drop)
- Grew a Spine: By the end of the movie, Andy is pretty much tired of being pushed around and comes to see that Strickland isn't entirely wrong about needing to stand up for one's self and putting your foot down when needed. By the end of the film, he ultimately decides to take Strickland on and, surprisingly enough, manages to hold his own. He still loses due to a last minute sucker punch but gains Strickland's respect. And even better, due to standing up to the Superintendent earlier, he manages to get his fellow teachers their jobs back.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Strickland. And by the end of the film, Campbell is screaming at a student to go to detention, which leads to even Strickland telling him to cool off.
- I Have a Family: Campbell tries using this upon Neil to lie to Principal Tyler, before Neil blackmails him for a MacBook Pro.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Strickland may be a hard-ass, but he does care deep down and is trying to get students to make something of themselves. There are various times when it's implied he does truly see his fellow teachers as friends who he trusts to look out for him as he does them. Several times through the film, he does cool off and be willing to call the fight off, though Andy stupidly keeps sparking it in one form or another. After the titled fist fight, he helps Andy get to the hospital for the birth of his second child, and by the end of the film, he even comes back for the next semester despite contemplating leaving the job earlier, admitting to Andy that he would miss the students otherwise. It's even implied he set up the fight both to get Andy to stand up for himself and to get the school some much-needed funding through media attention from their fight.
- The Jailbait Wait: Counselor Holly describing her... intimate perspective with the students.Holly: Isn't it weird, though, seeing these kids grow up and then one day it's just like bam, they're 18 and you can fuck them?
Campbell: ...No. - Karma Houdini: Mainly because it's the last day of school (as well as the staff's incompetence), none of the cold-hearted prankster students ever face comeuppance. Neil even ends up getting rewarded by Andy with a MacBook Pro.
- Manchild: Strickland, who is unreasonably violent and hostile.
- Mistaken for Pedophile: When Campbell catches a student masturbating in the bathroom, Miss Monet misinterprets the situation and assumes Campbell is a deviant. She even encourages Strickland to use a knife on Campbell instead of just fighting him because of it.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: While the two are in jail, Campbell convinces a rough-looking prisoner that Strickland wants to beat him up and tells him to wait for a cue. He then goes back to Strickland... only to find out that Strickland has decided to let bygones be bygones and call off the fight. He ends up triggering the fight with the prisoner anyway, and when he finds out Campbell set him up, he calls the fight back on.
- Only Sane Man: Campbell sees himself as this in a school full of chaos.Campbell: You kids are out of control! This school is crazy, filled with lunatic teachers!
- Police Are Useless: Multiple times, Campbell tries to summon police intervention to get out of the fight. However, the security guard insists that an after-school fight is out of his jurisdiction, and when he calls 911 to report Strickland, the operator and her colleagues just laugh at him and tell him to "take that ass-whoopin'".
- Pyrrhic Victory: Campbell's daughter Ally uses the talent show to curse out her bully and gets a standing ovation, to which her father states that while he's proud she's almost certain getting expelled.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Campbell gets completely fed up when he realizes that not only are his friends fired, but that he's been forced to wait outside well past his interview because the principal and superintendent were too busy talking about a fishing trip. As such, he tells them off and calls them out when they refuse to tell him what cutbacks they've been planning, considering he has every right to ask as a teacher who will be affected.
- Refuge in Audacity: Counselor Holly is certain that the jock student Nathaniel reciprocates her feelings for him and his ignoring her is just "playing her". As it turns out, he really was.
- Scary Black Man: Strickland full stop. Nearly all the faculty are terrified of him. Most of the students aren't even willing to try any absurd pranks on him, save one smart aleck who hacks the VCR while he's trying to show a civil war documentary and keeps turning it on and off. Once Strickland finds out, he smashes the student's iPhone. When a fellow student gives a spare to continue the prank, Strickland has enough, smashing the TV and leaving the room before coming back with an ax and chopping the student's seat.
- Sucky School: Roosevelt High School. The students are incredibly unruly; the staff is either too spineless and incompetent to manage them or going too overboard with their methods; and the school board decides to lay off all the teachers to save funding. Not to mention the security guard, who clearly couldn't care less about his job. Strickland's fight with Campbell does help the school go back on track and obtain enough funding.
- Technologically Blind Elders: While not exactly elderly, Strickland has a very poor understanding of modern technology such as iPhones (which he erroneously calls "computer-phones") and the coffee machine.
- Teens Are Monsters: Thanks to a lack of discipline and law enforcement, as well as access to paint, rope, glue, horses, lubricant, and smartphones that can manipulate outdated technology.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Strickland seems to, at least to some degree, think that getting into a fight will actually help Campbell grow some balls, as Campbell snitching on Strickland, while also personal to some degree, he saw as completely spineless. The ending also implies that he did it to draw attention to how bad that public school had gotten so they would get the funding they needed.
- World of Jerkass: From the roudy teenagers to the equally dysfunctional faculty, this trope is in full effect. Even outside the school, the other characters (except Campbell's wife and daughter) aren't much better. Even Campbell himself is proven to be a Dirty Coward, with no qualms against framing others for drug possession and staging a prison fight.
