This review was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn’t exist.Oh, to be young, insecure, and looking for a fight. This is the premise of Hulu’s Miguel Wants to Fight which attempts to riff on the well-worn coming-of-age movie though never makes consistent enough contact with the targets it is swinging for. Directed by Oz Rodriguez, who previously made last year’s Vampires vs. The Bronx that still has a bit more bite than other recent vampire films of late, it is ultimately undone by rather standard writing that undercuts its already hit-or-miss references to classic action cinema. Written by Jason Concepcion and Shea Serrano, it centers on a group of friends who discover one of their party has never backed them up in a scuffle. They proceed to do everything they can to try to get the titular Miguel (Tyler Dean Flores) into his first fight only to discover that this turns out to be harder than you would think. This is a promising premise with a winning cast that creates plenty of potential before the film introduces the recurring element of how it imagines those “fights.”

From the moment we see Miguel’s room, the legendary Bruce Lee looms large as a poster even before the young lad dons his yellow jumpsuit from Game of Death while recreating the scene from Enter the Dragon. This is merely the first cinematic mishmash that the film attempts to mold into something exciting of its own as everything from The Matrix series to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and RRR go referenced here. There are certainly worse works out there to draw inspiration from, but the execution of how they are recreated ends up feeling oddly lifeless. While it was never going to rise to the level of its cinematic references, it only makes you wish you were watching them instead of these rather hollow imitations. That it opens with a TikTok being made is apt as the film itself has the same depth as one. Before those who create these short videos feel maligned, the lack of depth that is inherent to the form does not mean there are not often talented people behind them. As is clear here, just adopting an approximation of the form does not mean they will work in the same way. It may elicit the occasional chuckle at the way the film puts its spin on them, but they never feel like anything more than one-dimensional knockoffs despite the best efforts of its young cast.

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The Referential Humor of ‘Miguel Wants to Fight’ Falls Flat
Image via Hulu

One of the more perplexing elements of the film is that the references themselves are the least interesting parts. No matter how many times it flags them up, often shouting out what they are in case you somehow may have missed them, they only play out like one-note sketches without anything more to them. There are strong characters to build from in David (Christian Vunipola), Cass (Imani Lewis) and Srini (Suraj Partha) though they only get subsumed by the superficial humor. Where a film like the action comedy Polite Society made rather clear references though still had a focus on character that gave its coming-of-age tale more of a kick, Miguel Wants to Fight just goes through the motions and ends up feeling quite trite. The emotional hook of the story, that Miguel is moving away with his parents and is thus motivated by sadness to seek out a fight rather than openly grapple with his feelings, takes a back seat to the empty spectacle of the various fights going awry. Try as he might, he just can’t seem to get into one. The visions he gets of how they would go, which is where we shift into the references, are made perpetually fleeting because of the way this is all structured.

No matter how well it mimics small aesthetic elements of these far greater films, from costumes to the occasional lines, there is no real force behind any of it to get you to care. Part of the problem is the action classics the film is pointing to have greater craft and stunt work than it does. However, it is more than that as there is little emotional oomph it lets us sit with. Some of this may come down to how the young characters are unable to express their feelings just yet, which is felt through Miguel not telling them he is leaving, though the way it gets dragged out starts to make it feel inert rather than illuminating. That isn’t to say there aren’t small fragments where we slow down to experience more heartfelt and humorous moments outside what begins to feel like gimmicks. The trouble is they are few and far between. It is as if you can see a world in which the film explores more of Miguel’s relationship with his father, played by Raúl Castillo of the introspective recent film The Inspection, and found something more engaging there than the emptiness it tries to dress up as dynamic.

‘Miguel Wants to Fight’ Never Fully Leaps Into Action
Image via Hulu

Some of the disappointment in the film is absolutely intentional, as it is all about the kids building up to this moment that will not solve their problems, though there is a dearth of grace in how it pulls this off. Just because we are meant to feel a sense of more authentic letdown doesn’t mean that should extend to the execution of the film writ large. There is just neither enough earned humor or prevailing heart to make either leave much of any impact. All the clear love the film has for the references it is throwing out is never molded into anything memorable of its own. When it reaches a tentative end, all that Miguel Wants to Fight felt like it was desperately fighting was to be a better version of itself that it is never quite able to reach.

Rating: C

The Big Picture

Miguel Wants to Fight fights to capture the essence of classic action cinema but falls short, resulting in hollow imitations. The references in the film lack depth and end up feeling like one-note TikTok sketches rather than genuinely humorous homages. The film’s emotional hook takes a back seat to gimmick, resulting in a lack of emotional oomph that hinders the audience’s investment.

Miguel Wants To Fight is on Hulu starting August 16.