Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Chick Fight’ on Amazon Prime, In Which Malin Akerman Joins A Fight Club To Try And Give Her Life Some Punch 

Light on its feet and charming enough to leave a mark, Chick Fight (Amazon Prime) uses the construct of an underground fight club to carry its message of encouragement and sisters doing it for themselves.

CHICK FIGHT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: As Chick Fight begins, we learn a lot of facts about Anna (Malin Akerman) in quick succession. She’s got two bucks to her name, her car is getting repossessed, the coffeeshop she owns is in the red, she’s still grieving for her mother who succumbed to cancer nine months before, and her dad (Kevin Nash) has since come out as pansexual. And oh yeah, when Anna and her best friend Charleene (Dulce Sloan) leave an errant lit joint behind in her shop, the whole place burns to the ground. Anna’s life is a total loss, and it’s only been fifteen minutes. Luckily, Charleene has a solution, a little secret she’s been meaning to let her BFF in on. When a woman’s life is going south and her self-confidence is shot, it’s time to talk about fight club.

Together with ringmaster Bear (Fortune Feimster), Charleene is the proprietor of this secret pugilist’s guild, where women duke it out in the octagon for the right to taste victory and slap a dollar bill on the wall. “Strike with fists, elbows, knees, feet — even your head if you so fancy,” Bear reminds the fighters as an aghast Anna takes in the scene. “Chokeholds and submissions are totally welcome.” Anna also learns about Olivia (Bella Thorne), who quickly lays waste to another victim with a roundhouse kick to the chops. Thwack!

At first bewildered and overwhelmed, Anna learns how the FC isn’t so much about wonton physical violence as it is a means of reckoning with — and bleeding for — one’s perceived flaws and failures. “This isn’t just a fight club, Anna,” Charleene tells her. “This is a shelter. A safe haven for women to come and lift the lid of the fucking pressure cooker of life.” Utterly whaled on in no uncertain terms during her first fight, the newbie is also revived by love interest and Entourage alum Kevin Connolly, a doctor, Bear’s brother, and the only man allowed inside this fight club.

When a drunk-with-empowerment Anna finally challenges FC badass Olivia to get in the ring, Charleene connects her with area drunk and ex-boxing coach Jack Murphy (Alec Baldwin), and the training montages begin. Even with the club as a de facto support group, Anna’s life is barely holding together at the seams. But it’s still better than the self-pity that was consuming her, and with a little bit of training and a whole lot of determination, she just might discover what she’s capable of, and how hard her head really is.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? There’s no proof that a book club doesn’t have just as much potential for camaraderie and confidence-building as a fight club, but the gospel of Chuck Palahniuk taught us that there is catharsis in receiving a fist to the face, and the world has never backed down. Of course, underground fight clubs weren’t invented by Palahniuk, David Fincher, Brad Pitt, and Edward Norton. Jean-Claude Van Damme detonated the shelves of video store action sections with 1988’s Bloodsport, and its format’s power was still being felt with 21st century VOD actioners such as Blood and Bone and Never Back Down.

Performance Worth Watching: Bella Thorne is having a lot of fun here as Olivia, the club’s designated bad actor, and the woman who everyone — because she’s literally beat everyone — grudgingly admits is also its best fighter. In a tete-a-tete with Anna, Olivia and her minions tell her they’re bringing a “fresh breed of women” into the club who won’t use it as a “support group for basic bitches.”

Memorable Dialogue: “When men punch each other, it’s normal,” explains Charleen, illuminating the club’s ethos. “We women feel the same way. But society has housetrained us to cry our shit out.” Thanks to the fight club, “we get to say fuck that, and find the strength to live our truth.”

Sex and Skin: None. Offscreen sexual escapades are joked about repeatedly.

Our Take: The underground brawling in Chick Fight isn’t of the duel to the death variety. It’s not about crunching bones and mortal finishing moves. Even after Alec Baldwin trains her, Malin Akerman isn’t looking to crush the trachea of her opposite number, a la Patrick Swayze in Road House. The action in this ring is often straightforward put-up-your-dukes pugilism, with sweeping MMA leg kicks and a few flying judo triangle chokes that Chick Fight often drops into slo-mo, for maximum return on bodies hitting mats. But while there are sequences full of these moves, there’s quite a bit more time spent on the outside of the octagon. Anna meets her dad’s new boyfriend Chuck (Alec Mapa), and once they begin, the training sequences in this film are mostly beach-side. Cocktail in hand, Baldwin basically channels Rip Torn’s Patches O’Houlihan in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, and Akerman is every one of the Average Joes combined. As Murphy, Baldwin gets to dispense aphorisms like “Take that final step toward bravery” while doing pushups and smoking a cigarette simultaneously.

Gearing up for the big fight finale between Anna and Olivia, there isn’t a lot of tension or mystery about its likely outcome. But Chick Fight sticks heartily to its message of empowerment, Akerman is charming as the determined underdog, and as Charleene and Bear, Sloan and Feimster get off a few zingy one-liners while generally being strong in support. As for Baldwin, his soused boxing trainer is a pleasantly intoxicated sleepwalk of a role, as if Jack Donaghy retired to Florida and the bottom of 3000 tequila sunrises.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Chick Fight is admirable in its messaging, and enjoyable in its interactions between the main cast. There are fists smashing into mouths, and even a few final boss finishing moves. But even when it’s inside the cage, Chick Fight is still pretty light on its feet.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

Watch Chick Fight on Amazon Prime