- Title: Ready to Rumble
- IMDb: link
Throwback Tuesday takes us back to year 2000 and the attempts of two braindead wrestling fans (David Arquette and Scott Caan), who have obviously never heard the term kayfabe, to help their shitcanned hero (Oliver Platt) reclaim his championship after being buried and fired. Ready to Rumble is a bizarre film, created during the height of World Championship Wrestling’s popularity and features several wrestlers of note including Sting, Diamond Dallas Page, Goldberg, Curt Henning, Booker T, Bam Bam Bigelow, and more.
Platt certainly wouldn’t be the most obvious choice to play a wrestler, but does what he can with the role of fan favorite, but otherwise all-around shitty guy, Jimmy King who only our pair of dunderheaded fans like these two could so blindly follow (at one point even arguing to his parents about who their son is, especially since he mentioned how they died in his autobiography).
The film works in several aspects of WCW at the time including the Nitro Girls, casting Rose McGowan as one of their group in what passes for the film’s femme fatale, bringing in the ring announcer and commentators, and even basing the evil promoter (Joe Pantoliano) off of Eric Bischoff. The film also marks the first appearance of the triple steel cage (a concept WCW attempted to use twice before abandoning it completely), and, as a tie-in to the film, WCW even decided to make Arquette their champion for a short-time (even though that idea wasn’t part of the film) which earned even harsher reviews than those for the movie.
The film, bad to begin with, at least hasn’t aged all that poorly and I’ll give it a minimal amount of credit for capturing a more innocent time in wrestling fandom. Dumb, but mostly harmless, it never quite makes it into the realm of a guilty pleasure, relying on the cheapest gags in can find (the Arquette/McGowan romantic subplot is downright hard to watch). Arquette and Caan are likable enough idiots, although their complete lack of understanding of how the wrestling business works, even when it’s shown or explained to them, is problematic in several ways and there’s no real incentive for us to root for them or Jimmy King (who is arguably just as bad a guy as the evil wrestling promotor).
Ready to Rumble was both a box office and critical failure and its tie-in to wrestling storylines of the time were even more harshly received. While it’s not the worst wrestling movie ever made, it failed to pull in even half of its cost at the box office and wasn’t able to pull new fans into WCW. Also of note, Martin Landau steals a couple of scenes hamming it up as an old-school wrestling trainer and John Cena has an uncredited role well before his career in WWE took off. The film has been released several times on DVD and is available on multiple streaming platforms.
Watch the trailer
