Ready to Rumble Review
by Chris Casino (ccasino AT erols DOT com)April 11th, 2000
Ready to Rumble (2000)
A film review by Chris Casino
Chris' film ratings scale:
**** - Excellent
*** - Good
** - Fair
* - Poor
NO STARS - Don't even bother.
NO STARS out of ****
Cast: David Arquette (Gordie Boggs), Oliver Platt (Jimmy King), Scott Caan (Sean Dawkins), Bill Goldberg (himself), Diamond Dallas Page (himself),
Joe Palitaliano (Titus Sinclair), Steve Borden (Sting), Rose McGowan (Sasha),
Martin Landau (Sal).
Crew: Directed by Brian Robbins, written by Steven Brill, Executive produced by Eric
Bischoff.
Let me begin this review by saying that I am a huge fan of professional wrestling, and
I'm not ashamed to say it. I'm not too fond of Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling,
however, and after this ridiculous excuse for a wrestling movie they have put out, I have
even less respect for them.
Gordie Boggs (Arquette, aptly cast as a moron, as he is one) and his best friend Sean Dawkins
(Scott Caan. The son of James Caan should not be reduced to garbage like this!) are two losers from
Wyoming with no jobs and no girlfriends, who look up to World Championship Wrestling champion
Jimmy King (a terribly casted Oliver Platt), as he is everything they are not. They finally
get to see him live and he is screwed out of his title by the evil, ruthless promoter Titus
Sinclair (a wasted Palitaliano, in a role originally meant for real-life WCW President Eric
Bischoff, whose name was written all over the role!). Gordie and Sean track down King in
Atlanta and discover that he is not really the English king the WCW writers created for him,
but a drunken, ignorant Southerner who is as irritated by these two lunkheads as Bob Newhart
was by Larry, Darryl, and Darryl. They sneak him back onto WCW TV, after which Sinclair
agrees to book him in a steel cage match in Las Vegas at WCW's next pay-per-view, against
his rival, Diamond Dallas Page. If he wins, King gets his title and his career back, plus one
million dollars.
WCW President Eric Bischoff, knowing his promotion was desperate with bad writing and ratings
skyrocketing down thanks to the far superior World Wrestling Federation, came up with the idea
for this movie hoping it would save WCW. He was then fired and rehired two months ago, but by the
time he'd left, they had already been contracted to do the film, and Bischoff could not play Sinclair
(which, in itself, is for the best, as anybody who has seen him on WCW programming knows that
Bischoff is NO actor!). The characters of Gordie and Sean show you exactly what Eric Bischoff
thinks of his fans. He thinks of them as young, dumb pathetic idiots who will believe anything
that will be put out in front of them is real. That is why he doesn't take the fans into
consideration when he books a Nitro or a pay-per-view. I have news for you, Eric: NO wrestling fan in
this day and age is dumb enough to believe that professional wrestling isn't for show, unless they
are four years old. This is 2000, you know, not 1985. Bischoff will try to cover up criticism like that by saying it is a comedy, but I have no doubt in my mind that if this had been a dramatic, ROCKY-style film (which it probably should have been. Professional wrestling is ridiculed enough as it is, why
should the first wrestling movie in ten years be a comedy?), Gordie and Sean would have been
portrayed in the same light.
Anybody who has seen the documentary WRESTLING WITH SHADOWS, documenting WWF owner Vince McMahon's
double-crossing of Bret Hart, will probably realize via the reviews and previews of READY TO
RUMBLE, that it is basically a rip-off of that film's storyline with the poor man's Wayne and
Garth thrown in for comedic affect. You can tell Titus Sinclair is supposed to poke fun at
Vince, but any self-respecting wrestling fan knows that Sinclair is more inspired by Bischoff
than Vince, and that Vince did what he had to do to Bret Hart. All of these aspects of the film,
needless to say, seriously offended me as a wrestling fan.
Another thing I found disturbing about the film was the romance between Gordie and Nitro Girl
Sasha (The lovely Rose McGowan). Wouldn't it have been easier to bring something new into the relationship rather than revealing she was only working on Gordie at Sinclair's insistance? I hate that cliche!
The World Wrestling Federation would have made a better film. They are the promotion everyone
cares about, they are winning the ratings, they have better wrestlers, and they take their fans
into consideration and don't treat fans like morons. So, Vince, how about a movie?
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
