Ready to Rumble Reviews

Cyndi Lauper, what hast thou wraught? An extremely loud and simpleminded cross between TV's WWF Smackdown! and DUMB AND DUMBER, director Brian Robbin's paean to professional wrestling is probably aimed at undiscriminating 15-year-old boys, a demographic group rumored to respond favorably to displays of testosterone-fueled violence and scantily clad nymphets. If so, they'll certainly get their money's worth from this tale of two losers who — what a concept! — dare to dream big. The two in question are twentysomething sewage workers Gordie (David Arquette) and Sean Dawkins (Scott Caan), dim bulbs with few prospects save the burning desire to see their hero, wrestling champ Jimmy King (Oliver Platt), when he comes to town. The night of the show, however, a slimy wrestling impresario (Joe Pantoliano) decides that King is through, and their hero goes down in flames. Enraged, Gordie and Sean decide to manage Jimmy themselves and endeavor to put him back on top. Along the way, they encounter King's terrifying, trailer-park ex-wife (comic Carolyn Rhea), a wily old wrestling coach (Martin Landau, at his sepulchral best) and a predatory snake in the grass (Rose McGowan). All eventually ends well at a wild melee featuring real wrestling stars playing themselves. If you're the sort of person who finds contemporary pro wrestling a vile, depressing spectacle that appeals to our worst insticts, you probably won't be able to sit through much of this; if you're not, you just may find the film's endless succession of fart jokes and knees-to-the-groin shots the icing on the cake. In either case, it's a measure of the filmmakers' laziness that the movie's best joke, implying the moral equivalence of Charles Manson and Michael Bolton, is put in the mouth of a character who, as written, is way too dumb and clueless ever to have thought it up.