This banner was supplied by SAFE Audit

Ready To Rumble

             Ready to Rumble is not a masterpiece in film; I have a problem even regarding it as a film. It’s more of a show, a big commercial for Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling (WCW). The movie is almost entirely about and fully showcases the wrestlers of the WCW like Diamond Dallas Page, Goldberg, and Sting.

            The story is very minimal and basic. There are these two guys, Gordy (David Arquette) and Sean (Scott Caan). They are two twenty-something wrestling fans from Wyoming. When they go to a live event for the big match up, there favorite wrestler Jimmy King (Oliver Platt) is defeated and his career is announced to be over by the mean commissioner Titus (Joe Pantoliano). Gordy and Sean decide to go on a quest to find Jimmy and bring him back to the top and defeat the evil Titus’ plans. On the way, they meet some people, have some fun, and clean up some port-o-potties. Sounds great huh, well it’s not.

  The movie makes many attempts at humor, only a few of them work. The jokes that make you laugh, however, do not outnumber the film’s many duds. There is a funny repertoire between Arquette and a convenience store cashier played by Ahmet Zappa. The cashier is very mean to Arquette so Arquette Dreams of ways to get him back. I especially enjoyed one version in which they have a wrestling match and Arquette's tag team partner is “Macho Man” Randy Savage. They wrestle between the aisles knocking over cans and getting body slammed on the floor. The other good part of the film is the sexual confrontation between Arquette and Rose McGowan. McGowan plays Sasha the head Nitro Girl, the cheerleaders of the WCW. She becomes attracted to Gordy and they have some nice, funny scenes together especially one scene in which Arquette calls McGowan’s breasts foreign objects than punches her directly into the face.

  Now what didn’t work in this movie? That would be the rest of it. The flick was filled with stupid potty humor about farts and toilets. The two lead characters work for a port-o-potty cleaning company and when they crash the truck, the excrements spill all over the road. It's not funny; it's pathetic and brainless. The film is giving homage to how blindly faithful of their wrestlers but not all wrestling fans are that way. I watch it for entertainment and I would think some people would take offense to what is said throughout the movie. The main characters in the film actually get to wrestle, like that would happen to any fan, especially to 2 that stalk a wrestler and sneak him back onto set. Also, I wondered how they got into the backstage so easily; they just walked right in.

  I like wrestling. I watch it at home and laugh. It’s continuously funny and has great characters otherwise I wouldn’t watch it. This movie wasn't even funny or fun to watch like the wrestling on TV. The only fun I had in the movie was pointing out the wrestlers I knew. The funny thing was that many of the WCW featured wrestlers like Saturn and Chris Benoit have left WCW for more money but are still featured in the film prominently. The movie was too dim-witted to be funny. It is possibly the most useless and under-developed film ever. A recent film in this genre of fans would be the kiss fan film, Detroit Rock City. That movie was interesting, well done and continuously funny unlike this film. The acting was good plus the jokes had humor and made you laugh.

  Now that the Scream trilogy is over, Arquette has nothing else to do so he has to do crap like this and be a spokesman in those dumb 1-800-CALL-ATT ads. At least he has a hot wife in Courtney Cox. He’s in the funny parts of the film but there aren’t enough to make him look good.  The music was bad also feature such overplayed tunes as Kid Rock's "Bawitdaba" and "Cowboy". Martin Landau has a great cameo as a classic, hard-nosed wrestling trainer named Sal that whips the King back into shape to regain his throne.

 Script is important to a film but this piece of shit could have been made with a couple of scribblings on a napkin. A fan of the wrestlers who are featured in the film probably wrote it. At times the movie even tries to show wrestling as real. The wrestlers form alliances, go to people’s houses and beat them up. It's utterly ridiculous. The whole film was a wasteful, dumfounding experience.

 The movie was made to pay homage to the fans, telling them things that made wrestling, not the wrestlers. The wrestlers are making more money to make a movie to thank the fans for begin fans by paying 5 dollars to see a potty-humor movie. The WCW sucks and this movie is just a pathetic two-hour commercial to watch it. If you're going to watch wrestling watch WWF, it's actually entertaining. The wrestling is betters, they’re funnier, more diverse, and have better entrance themes. Oh and the girls are hotter. Is this what movies have become, 2 hour-long commercials that you have to pay to see? Don’t waste your money.

Rating: * out of ****
Reviewed by Joe Soria
Running time: 107 minutes
Rated

Genre: Dumb, potty humored Comedy
Main stars: David Arquette (Scream), Scott Caan (Varsity Blues), Rose McGowan (Jawbreaker), Martn Landau (Ed Wood), Goldberg , Diamond Dallas Page.
Written by: Steven Brill (The Mighty Ducks)
Director: Brian Robbins (Varsity Blues)