Best worst thing you’ll see all week: Catfight

The titular fight in Fist Fight, a dopey Charlie Day vehicle, is a classic example of the barroom brawl as a rite of masculinity. It’s played as a redemptive act by which two men come together and earn mutual respect. It even saves all the teachers’ jobs at a beleaguered public school. Spoiler. But there’s no reason to see Fist Fight (the delightful Jillian Bell excepted).

The titular fight in Catfight is an outrageous, loudly foleyed, and drawn-out slapstick routine that would make Roddy Piper and Keith David proud. It’s dumb. Sloppy. Overblown. Director Onur Tukel shoves your face in it. It does not redeem anyone. No jobs are saved. It’s pointless. It’s not even funny, although I’m not sure it’s supposed to be.

What is funny is watching Anne Heche and Sandra Oh play their singularly unpleasant characters with a two-fisted doggedness, especially when they’re not throwing punches, taking falls, and setting up work for their stunt doubles. Both actresses come roaring out of their comfort zones, swinging wildly, and often connecting. These are two reprehensible characters, the likes of which women rarely get to play in the forefront (see also, The Bronze). Move over, bad moms, teachers, and santas. Heche and Oh have something to show you.

The real conflicts here are the conversations and social interaction. Tukel’s script is less about the catfight and more about reversals of fortune, told in the context of satire with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. It doesn’t entirely work but it sure is timely. I can’t tell if the joke about trees named Bernie, Hillary, and Donald is pre-election or post-election, but I think Tukel meant for me to wince. He makes political hay with the issues of war and healthcare, the yin and yang of government: fighting and nurturing, killing and saving, masculine and feminine. But with fart jokes. Like I said, it has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

“Cute isn’t truthful,” Anne Heche sneers. Catfight is not cute.

Catfight is currently in limited release as is available for VOD on Google Play, Vudu, and YouTube.