Ready to Rumble (2000)

[APHughes 1]

This movie is so bad it is good

[lamuella 2]

A hundred times this. This movie is delightfully awful.

 

For insider info or insight you could get pro wrestlers and standup comedians Mick Foley and Colt Cabana as guests

[RyanSz 3140]

The bad thing about this movie is that was made with WCW who at the time thought it was a good idea to basically tell the few fans it had left that wrestling was fake, in both their wrestling shows and this movie. Then you have the two main characters be the dumbest people on the face of the planet who happen to be wrestling fans, just to further insult and alienate the wrestling audience. Also, I can see Jason and June going nuts over the whole stick-my-hand-up-my-ass-to-get-a-free-slushee plot point.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

Lets not forget it was Oliver Platt who was cast as the most popular wrestler, love me some Oliver Platt but never has someone been further from being able to portray an intimidating physical presence. Also whose decision was it to make Joey Pants dress like a Native American for the whole movie?

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

What kind of annoys me about this movie is not only is wrestling of course... pre-arranged in its outcome, but that there are so many batshit insane true stories about wrestling that are worth telling, just as many (if not more) than other entertainment industries like film, TV, or conventional sports. If you've heard any stories told on podcasts (or anywhere) by Mick Foley, Roddy Piper, CM Punk, Jake the Snake, Colt Cabana, etc., you know there is a plethora of madness in professional wrestling that dwarfs any act done by David Arquette, even at his stupidest. Hell, even Mick Foley's first book would make a great, quirky biopic since it has a definite everyman quality, along with the ludicrousness and disregard for physical safety inherent in professional wrestling.

[RyanSz 3140]

If you check out the LolWCW or even Wrestling Sleeze through that site, you can see any number of horrifying rumors and true stories, all of which better than the story of this movie.

 

http://taimapedia.org/index.php?title=Wrestling_Sleaze

[sillstaw 414]

All of this and you've barely even touched on the whole "David Arquette becomes the WCW champion for five minutes" debacle, a fiasco so infamous that I know about it even though I don't think I've watched five minutes of wrestling in my life.

[RyanSz 3140]

The less said about that abortion the better.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

All of this and you've barely even touched on the whole "David Arquette becomes the WCW champion for five minutes" debacle, a fiasco so infamous that I know about it even though I don't think I've watched five minutes of wrestling in my life.

That's another one of those infinite number of things surrounding the movie that's way more interesting than the movie itself, which was a plot device in months worth of wrestling storylines. For more on the absurdity of WCW at the time, I highly Highly HIGHLY suggest reading "The Death of WCW" by RD Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez, which I've probably mentioned elsewhere in some other wrestling movie thread.

[RyanSz 3140]

That book is one of my most favorite pieces of reading material. I have since gotten the 10th Anniversary edition because it added quite a bit of new material and interviews, and thankfully sourced stuff so you can shut up nay-sayers, also because my other edition had been read to tatters. Fingers crossed that they get around to a "Death of TNA" once that promotion finally has its last breath. I will at least give credit where credit is due in the whole Arquette debacle by saying that Arquette was solidly against the idea of becoming the top champion of the promotion, realizing how bad it would be received by fans and writers, and then once it was all done he donated all the money he made wrestling to the families of Owen Hart and Brian Pillman as well as Darren Drozdov who had recently been paralyzed.

 

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

That book is one of my most favorite pieces of reading material. I have since gotten the 10th Anniversary edition because it added quite a bit of new material and interviews, and thankfully sourced stuff so you can shut up nay-sayers, also because my other edition had been read to tatters. Fingers crossed that they get around to a "Death of TNA" once that promotion finally has its last breath. I will at least give credit where credit is due in the whole Arquette debacle by saying that Arquette was solidly against the idea of becoming the top champion of the promotion, realizing how bad it would be received by fans and writers, and then once it was all done he donated all the money he made wrestling to the families of Owen Hart and Brian Pillman as well as Darren Drozdov who had recently been paralyzed.

 

Yeah, I'd been meaning to pick up the updated edition, because as bad as some things were that close to when WCW went under, so much more stuff came out later on that kind of puts a different, stranger, or more tragic spin on things.

[RyanSz 3140]

The only downside is that the new material is kind of shoehorned in at times and if you have read the book as much as I have you can notice the new material, which can break the flow of the original book. It's not too bad and the information is really interesting. I did enjoy a new thing that they added called "Lesson Not/Learned" where they discuss how mistakes that WCW made were either repeated by the WWE or TNA or how they were able to avoid those issues, not surprisingly many of the lessons were not learned.

[JesseDeLeon 16]

This would be a great movie for the podcast. It was made in an effort to bring wrestling (WCW) to the mainstream. Not only was it panned by wrestling and non-wrestling fans, it was one of the turning points in the Monday Night Wars. Would the HDTGM gang enjoy this film?

[Smigg 1488]

Yes, do this.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

This would be a great movie for the podcast. It was made in an effort to bring wrestling (WCW) to the mainstream. Not only was it panned by wrestling and non-wrestling fans, it was one of the turning points in the Monday Night Wars. Would the HDTGM gang enjoy this film?

I wouldn't say it was a turning point so much as it was one of the nails in the coffin, as it launched a pretty terrible angle (David Arquette: WCW World Heavyweight Champion) they never really recovered from after a pretty bad couple of years of them kicking their OWN ass with horrible mismanagement and creative what-the-fuckery, as the WWF had corrected their course for good in late '98 or so and just extended their lead from there. If you're interested in the story, I highly suggest reading "The Death of WCW" by RD Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez. A new updated 10th anniversary edition came out last year.

[RyanSz 3140]

This would be a great movie for the podcast. It was made in an effort to bring wrestling (WCW) to the mainstream. Not only was it panned by wrestling and non-wrestling fans, it was one of the turning points in the Monday Night Wars. Would the HDTGM gang enjoy this film?

It was more an attempt to get them BACK into the mainstream, because when the NWO was brand new and then you had Goldberg, they were one of the hottest items, along with the WWE, in pop culture. Yet there was so much "how can we fuck up our own company" decisions made that it was soon the laughing stock of the media, and not just wrestling media, they were lambasted for the Arquette decision in papers like USA Today and Entertainment Weekly.

[Smigg 1488]

Okay, I need to re-establish my support of them doing this movie. It's worse than No Holds Barred, which makes it all the more glorious, I can say SO much about this movie!

[RyanSz 3140]

I want to bump this as well since this movie has a plot point where Arquette gets free slushies by sticking his hand up his own ass.

[Chainsaw Starring Nic Cage 95]

I hope they do this movie so badly... it's just so terrible, and pretty much helped in killing WCW.

[JackChristensen 177]

I remember renting this movie, and not watching it until the end. I just went over to WikiPedia. I remember Ahmet Zappa being in the movie as a store clerk, but Dweezil also has a song on the soundtrack. What's the deal with the Zappas and terrible movies?

[Chainsaw Starring Nic Cage 95]

I remember renting this movie, and not watching it until the end. I just went over to WikiPedia. I remember Ahmet Zappa being in the movie as a store clerk, but Dweezil also has a song on the soundtrack. What's the deal with the Zappas and terrible movies?

 

They make terrible choices when they're not making music?

 

It's interesting to think about the connection that the Zappas have to terrible movies, when you consider that Frank and Moon Unit did the song "Valley Girl", which popularized Valspeak across the country when it became a Top 40 hit, which led to the movie Valley Girl, which led to the first major roll for one Mr. Nicholas Coppola...

[joe727 1]

Today is the 17th anniversary of the release of this film. I know they already did a shitty pro wrestling movie with "No Holds Barred" but i'm holding out hope they eventually take on this one.