57
Metascore
12 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 75TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghTV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghIt's genuinely funny, oddly romantic and surprisingly engaging for what could easily have been an obnoxious vanity project.
- 75New York Daily NewsNew York Daily NewsThe Hammer benefits from Carolla's low-energy, low-impact style. He doesn't so much deliver quips as let them dribble out the side of his mouth.
- 63New York PostKyle SmithNew York PostKyle SmithThe script depends heavily on familiar stand-up comedy bits, but it's full of sharp wisecracks and slacker charm.
- 60VarietyRonnie ScheibVarietyRonnie ScheibThis inordinately likable and consistently funny boxing saga-cum-romantic comedy doesn't so much ridicule the "Rocky"-type inspirational sports fable as gently deflate its heroic overdrive.
- 60The Hollywood ReporterThe Hollywood ReporterThe film hardly could be credited with breaking any new ground, but it has a hangdog charm, much like its leading actor.
- Rambling and disorganized. At the same time, though, The Hammer also has dry wit and unforced working-class swagger, and hits some surprising emotional notes.
- 60Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternWall Street JournalJoe MorgensternSo many movies these days are overworked or overblown: The Hammer feels genuinely tossed-off. It isn't a great movie, or even a consistently good one. Yet it gets to elusive feelings about failure and success, hope and mortality (and reveals a quietly subversive attitude toward the boxing-movie genre).
- 50SalonAndrew O'HehirSalonAndrew O'HehirIf you liked "Rocky Balboa" you should be in good shape, since it's exactly the same movie, just aimed at a teeny-tiny-bit younger demographic and with an affectless leading man who avoids hambone acting by not acting at all.
- 50Village VoiceVillage VoiceFormer "Loveline" and "The Man Show" co-host Adam Carolla brings his self-deprecating, improvisational, regular-dude deadpan--as well as his former Golden Gloves status--to this semi-autobiographical comedy with ambitions so low that one might call it charmingly mediocre.
- 25Seattle Post-IntelligencerBill WhiteSeattle Post-IntelligencerBill WhitePlays like a pilot for a situation comedy about a 40-year-old carpenter who decides to return to the boxing ring.