In 1999, professional wrestling was at the peak of its popularity. Two companies were at the top of the industry and facing off in the infamous “Monday Night Wars” pitting WWE’s Raw is War against WCW’s Monday Nitro at the same time slot while both shows would consistently receive ratings of 5.0 or higher. Eventually, WWE would buy out WCW and end the war making them the king of the sports entertainment business. One of the many reasons why WCW failed towards the end could be traced back to the film, Ready to Rumble. This was suppose to be a way to bring popularity back to WCW and swing the momentum of the Monday Night Wars in their favor, however, this movie was so bad it ended up seeming to be a parody of the sport itself and led to one of the worst real life storylines in WCW. So in honor of Wrestlemania 33 this Sunday, this week’s Ode to Bad Reel is Ready to Rumble.
The movie begins with best friends, Gordie Boggs (David Arquette) and Sean Dawkins (Scott Caan), going to a WCW Nitro live event. During the event, their idol and favorite wrestler Jimmy King (Oliver Platt) defends his WCW World Heavyweight Title against Diamond Dallas Page. During the match, DDP is ordered by the corrupted head of the company, Titus Sinclair (Joe Pantoliano), to go off script, disregard the planned ending and essentially try to end the career of Jimmy King. Gordie and Sean are devastated by what they have witnessed since it seems like their hero has been kicked out of WCW for good. They later find him living in a trailer, dressed like a woman and never wanting to wrestle again. They convince him to make a comeback and regain the glory Sinclair took from him. The three go on a mission to get King back to the mountain top and re-capture the WCW World Heavyweight Championship.
The rest of the film is filled with dry jokes, sloppy storytelling and David Arquette playing the most annoying man-child in cinema history. His character is so awkward to watch in Ready to Rumble, it got to the point where it seemed like he was blatantly making fun of the stereotype of a wrestling fan in a movie meant for wrestling fans. He also does nothing in this movie to help King get to the top, except for one moment towards the end of the film. It was literally Sean doing everything for King while Gordie was just having a weird relationship with a Nitro girl and avoiding his completely insane father who is trying to force him to become a state trooper.
The pro wrestler cameos were not too bad here but the story took away from anything being believable in Ready to Rumble. The movie constantly switched from wrestling being fake to it being real that it was hard to figure out which side of the coin this movie falls on. The fact that Jimmy King was told he would never wrestle for WCW ever again after being screwed out of his title without acknowledging the fact that professional wrestlers are contract players and it would probably breach their agreement if he were fired like that is just one of the major plot holes in this film. There was also way too many groin strikes, so many in fact, that the film makers actually put a compilation of all the low blows during the credits of the movie.
This “comedy” film has just one joke that actually worked for me throughout the whole movie and it came about 90 minutes into the film. During the triple steel cage match at the end of the film, DDP tries to handcuff Jimmy King to the cage but Sean throws powder in his eyes. DDP immediately replies with, “you idiot, that stuff doesn’t work” but it is revealed that this was a distraction and Sean handcuffs DDP to the cage instead. Once DDP is handcuffed, Sean delivers the best joke of the film when he uses DDP’s own diamond hand signal and says, “diamond upside down is a pussy.” That is the best this movie has to offer when it comes to humor.
Like I said in the introduction, Ready to Rumble led to one of the worst real life storylines in professional wrestling history. WCW decided to bring in David Arquette in an effort to cross promote the film and the actual wrestling product. This eventually led to a decision to make David Arquette the Heavyweight Champion on an episode of Thursday Thunder. WCW decided to place their top championship, which real athletes train and sacrifice their body to one day hopefully hold to a Hollywood actor who has not wrestled a day in his life. He later lost the belt in the exact same match they invented for the film, the triple cage. This completely delegitimized their World Heavyweight Championship and eventually turned their audience off so much it led to their demise.
Ready to Rumble is only worth watching to wrestling fans, especially if you were a fan during the Monday Night Wars since you will see a lot of familiar faces and get quite a bit of nostalgia. On the other hand, if you are just looking for a comedy flick to throw on for laughs, then this is not the movie for you. The jokes in this movie are so bad and childish that even someone with large sense of humor like myself would find it extremely hard to laugh at any part of this film. I would only recommend this to wrestling fans, so if you are not, stay clear of this abomination of story telling known as Ready to Rumble.
