Day 26 - What film is a guilty pleasure of yours?
Answer: Ready to Rumble (2000)
This film is my number one guilty pleasure film of all time. I kind of have an unironic love for the sport of professional wrestling. I know that it's scripted. I know that it's silly. I don't really care, though. I have a ton of fun with it and it brings me back to my childhood. You can chalk it up to my nostalgia for professional wrestling. I don't necessarily keep up to date to everything that happens in today's wrestling world, but I take a peek from time to time to see if anything interesting is happening. However, when it comes to a guilty pleasure of mine, I freaking love the film Ready to Rumble. It's probably one of the best and one of the worst wrestling inspired movies of all time.
I love everything about this movie. Oliver Platt's portrayal of the fictional wrestling, Jimmy King, is fantastic. The film is about Jimmy King's fall from grace after his ego gets out of control and a conspiracy not unlike the infamous "Montreal Screw Job" occurs that pushes him out of WCW. It's up to his two biggest fans to locate Jimmy King and try to help him return to his throne at the top of the mountain. It's great because they both portray the wrestling business as what it truly is with everything being scripted and kayfabe, but they also portray all the wrestlers like they live their lives as the characters they play on television. It's both full of meta humor and pokes fun at the wrestling business as a whole.
The reason this film can be considered one of the worst wrestling films in existence would be the impact that it had on the industry when it came out. The film is brought to us by the now defunct wrestling company, WCW, who was just known for all of its simply... amazing... ideas... Yeah. What impact am I talking about? If you were a fan of wrestling and watched WCW during the 2000s when this film came out, you might remember the time when they decided to make David Arquette a part of the show for some strange reason. It would've been fine if it had just stopped at being around to promote the film, but they didn't stop there. No. They decided to slap on the company's top championship belt on David Arquette and that's a big no-no in the wrestling industry. There's nothing that tarnishes the status of your top prize and trivializes what it means to earn it than giving it to someone who isn't even a professional wrestler. The movie is still a fun watch, though.
