Ready To Rumble (2000)

I became a fan of professional wrestling in 1993, not too long after the end of its boom in popularity that had began in the '80s. For numerous reasons, the industry had fallen into a sharp decline, one that it wouldn't pull out of for several years. It wasn't until the beginning of what's been dubbed "the Monday Night Wars" did pro wrestling start regaining the massive mainstream popularity it had enjoyed during the previous decade. With Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling and Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation embroiled in a bitter ratings war for dominance of cable television on Monday nights, the period between 1995 and 2001 was one of the industry's hottest periods.

Seriously, once things really began to take off, wrestlers were everywhere again. They were turning up in video games, on toy shelves and T-shirts and the covers of magazines like TV Guide. Go to any random town on any random weekend and you'd probably see a wrestling show being held at the local high school gymnasium or National Guard Armory. And the towns that didn't get these shows had groups of kids willing to wrestle on trampolines in their own backyards. Pro wrestler Mick Foley's first two autobiographies even held the top spot on the New York Times bestseller list.

And in a case of history repeating itself, the Monday Night Wars saw a promotion release its own movie. Just like how the WWF had produced the Hulk Hogan vehicle No Holds Barred in 1989, WCW created Ready To Rumble in 2000. Even though WCW had their parent company, the AOL Time Warner media conglomerate, backing them up, it didn't stop Ready To Rumble from being a pure waste of time and resources. I've seen wrestling promoters try to make their audiences accept some really goofy crap over the years, but this movie actually makes me embarrassed to be a fan.

The movie centers focuses on Gordie Boggs (David Arquette) and Sean Dawkins (Scott Caan), a pair of dim-witted sewage workers who are the best of friends. They're also two of the biggest wrestling fans ever. They absolutely live and breathe pro wrestling. And for the record, their all-time favorite wrestler is Jimmy King (Oliver Platt), the reigning WCW World Champion.

As the movie begins, Gordie and Sean have procured tickets to a taping of WCW Monday Nitro, where King will be defending his title against "Diamond" Dallas Page (playing himself) in the main event. They just know that King will once again walk out victorious, but their hopes are quickly dashed away when Page and unscrupulous WCW promoter Titus Sinclair (Joe Pantoliano) conspire to screw King out of the title and drive him out of the business. Heartbroken over their idol's loss, Gordie and Sean formulate a plan to track down King and help him get revenge.

If you aren't a fan of professional wrestling, you more than likely have been and will continue to be blissfully unaware of the existence of Ready To Rumble. But those of us who were fans back in 2000 will remember it well. We don't want to remember it, but we do. There's no sense in dancing around it, so I'll just come right out and tell you the obvious: Ready To Rumble is a terrible movie. It's a waste of time, of effort, and of money that could have been spent producing a good movie. It's what happens when a wrestling company deliberately insults its fans while expecting them to buy into the crap they're shoveling down their throats.

At the helm is Brian Robbins, a former cast member of the '80s sitcom Head of the Class who went on to direct such timeless classics as Good Burger and Norbit. Robbins was just a year removed from his mediocre football movie Varsity Blues, and he digs himself closer to the bottom of the barrel with Ready To Rumble.

Frankly, Robbins's direction is flat, bland, and unexciting. It's just a bore to watch. I mean, if I weren't already a wrestling fan, I'd have probably given up on the movie ten minutes in. Robbins fails to add anything compelling to the movie, making me wish I could be watching regular pro wrestling on TV instead of this movie.

But it isn't like he had any decent material to work with. Written by Steven Brill, the script is so incredibly stupid that I'm shocked that it can even exist. One of its problems is that the script feels over-reliant on tired toilet humor and jokes that simply are not funny. I can handle bad movies of any other genres, but bad comedies are just depressing and sad. I mean, the first joke of the movie is Gordie sticking his fingers up his butt, then making a convenience store clerk sniff them so he can trick said clerk into giving him a free Slurpee. That's how the comedy ball starts rolling here, folks. It just gets worse from there. If I listed every awful joke, we'd be here all day. But trust me when I say that there aren't a whole lot of jokes in the movie that are actually funny. Unfortunately, the funny ones are so few and far between that you'd struggle to say they're even there at all.

Another thing I didn't quite understand is how weird the depiction of wrestling is. During the match between King and Page at the beginning of the movie, they more or less come out and say that wrestling is rigged. King is heard whispering a sequence of moves to Page, and King's loss is due to the match's predetermined ending being changed without his knowledge. After that, wrestling is painted as being a legitimate athletic competition. Well, which is it? Is wrestling rigged, or is it real? I know you suck, Ready To Rumble, but you could at least keep your story straight!

Oh, and you know the whole thing with the sleazy promoter that screwed the champ out of the title by changing the ending of the match? Anybody who knows anything about pro wrestling history is gonna see what they're alluding to there. If Titus Sinclair isn't supposed to be a parody of Vince McMahon, I'll eat my hat. I guess this was WCW's way of getting some payback after the Ted Turner knockoff in No Holds Barred.

And bringing up the rear is the cast, who don't fare too much better either. Playing one of the movie's co-leads is David Arquette, who nobody will ever accuse of being a master thespian. In his defense, Arquette can actually be pretty funny when given the right material. But Ready To Rumble is so terrible that he wears out his welcome almost immediately. Get ten minutes into the movie, and you'll hate him. His co-star, Scott Caan, doesn't reach the same level of annoyance as Arquette, but he's still pretty awful. Caan is just plain not funny, simple as that.

As our token villain, Joey Pantoliano is sadly disappointing. I really hate saying that, since I'm a Joey Pants fan. But his work here is so rough to watch, made rougher by the terrible writing. It's a real shame to see good actors in bad movies, because I know Pantoliano can do so much better.

At least Oliver Platt manages to illicit a few legitimate laughs. Platt actually left me with the feeling that he's too good for this movie. He doesn't deserve to be in this crap, but at least he puts forth a watchable performance.

The last two years of WCW's existence were plagued with misfortune. A combination of sinking television ratings, drastic financial losses, and increasingly stupid creative and business decisions led to the company's eventual closure and sale to Vince McMahon in 2001. And among those aforementioned stupid decisions was Ready To Rumble. It's bad enough that it only made half its budget back, but it would contribute to one of the most idiotic moves in pro wrestling history. Shortly after the movie's release, WCW had David Arquette wrestle a match and win their World Championship as a promotional stunt. I am not kidding. His reign lasted only twelve days, but the absurdity of it was enough to haunt the dreams of more than a few wrestling fans.

And that's Ready To Rumble's ultimate legacy. It was in and out of theaters and quickly forgotten, with only stupid promotional moves stuck in people's memories. And really, Ready To Rumble is bad yet forgettable. You may totally hate it while it's playing, but at least you won't remember any of it. When a publicity stunt that made the movie's star a pro wrestling champion is more memorable than the movie itself, you know things have gone horribly wrong. So my final rating is two stars, and a suggestion: If you're gonna watch a wrestling movie, just go with The Wrestler. At least that one doesn't suck.

Final Rating: **