As most red-blooded males know, the first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. Consequently, the first rule of movies that rip off Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.

Yet much as it would obviously like to be mentioned in the same breath as David Fincher’s testosterone-soaked satire, this celluloid dumb-bell is merely The Karate Kid reworked for happy-slappers.

If no holds are barred in the world of Mixed Martial Arts, no clichés are omitted from a script that’s so by-the-numbers it could have been ordered from a takeaway.

Moody youth dragged to a new town by his nagging mum? Check. Absent father issues? Gotcha. Immediate run-in with the school bully? Naturally. Mind-numbing rock soundtrack? Uh-huh. Foreign mentor? Geeky new friend? Multiple training montages? Big tournament at the end? Yes, yes, yes, oh yes!

Tom Cruise/Cristiano Ronaldo hybrid Sean Faris is Jake, a hunk of high-school gridiron from Iowa who finds himself whisked off to Florida’s version of The O.C.

Having come to the attention of every jock, dork and bikini-clad babe in town thanks to the internet, Jake duly befriends a dork (Evan Peters) and wows a babe called Baja (Heard) with his knowledge of The Iliad.

Sadly, he has less luck with the jocks. See, the school’s cock - in every sense - is Ryan (played, aptly enough, by The O.C.’s Cam Gigandet) who maintains both his status and Toblerone-like abs by dishing out kickings to potential threats like Jake.

Worse still, Baja turns out to be Ryan’s girl. Well, knock me down with a Lycra thong.

Humiliated, Jake is taught the finer points of wrestling, kickboxing, ju-jitsu and anger management by African gym owner Jean Roqua (Blood Diamond’s Hounsou - think Mr Miyagi without the chopsticks).

As the inevitable showdown draws closer, it dawns on Baja that Ryan isn’t very nice. It will take considerably less time for viewers to realise that this film is also dumber than it looks.

While paying lip-service to the art of self-discipline and throwing in laughable references to the works of Homer, it shows every brain-jarring, bone-busting move being cheered on and gleefully captured on some sort of mobile camera.

And if everyone recovered from pain and injury as quickly as Jake, the world’s casualty departments would have nothing to fear but tumbleweed.

On the upside, the fights are slickly staged and first-time director Wadlow is helped on his idiotic odyssey with the welcome yet unwarranted gravitas provided by two-time Oscar nominee Hounsou.

But any movie that portrays violence as a good thing has to be a bad thing.

Elliott Noble