Oh dear, another one of WWE’s crap PG movies, meant to encourage old school American “believe in yourself and anything is possible” cliches, that seemed to have worked for the young adult generation of the 80-ies, but nowadays aren’t convincing even to toddlers. Movie itself has a strong 80-ies vibe to it, and I believe it could have done much better in those days when bad acting, straightforward plots and over the top, baby face protagonists bent on overcoming the odds were “the shit”. Mind you, at least most of the those movies truly had bad ass main characters, which is sadly not the case for this movie. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, but more on that later…
As for the plot itself, it probably could have been explained in detail in one sentence, but I’ll foolhardily try and be even more more precise about some of it’s features. Here we go…
Your regular 40 kg’s bully-target loser of a son, living in a poverty ridden community with his depressed mother, who can’t get over the fact that she lost her husband in a car accident a year ago, and who also happens to be in a heated relationship with her older son, with whom she doesn’t even speak. Looks grim, right?… But wait, the kid’s got a dream! And he is a bout to fulfill it, dammit, cause we are in a freekin’ 80-ies tribute film! But, without the blood, violence, sex and other cool stuff from that period. That’s PG for you, I guess…
Anyways, the 40 kg’s kid wants to become the amateur wrestler, of all things, sport that took his father’s life (figuratively speaking), and wrecked his older brother’s life. With no support of his mother at all (she even screams at him at one point and strictly forbids him to do anything related to wrestling), the only positive and supportive factors in the little dude’s life, (his movie name is Cal), are his weird, emo friend Luli, who also happens to have a crash on him, and on couple of occasions even suggests sexually related stuff to him, which is really, really weird and mind-blowing, since they are bout around 12-13, and we are in a children’s movie dammit! Hold on, hold that thought for a second, that’s not even as remotely weird as Danny Glover’s character who seems to stalk Cal, whenever he is alone in the forest, near the lake, or anywhere out of civilization, posing as a strange, pedophile looking fisherman, who always holds his fishing reel upside down. Depending on the reader’s depravity, that might have sounded either completely normal, or utterly disgusting…
Now, you might think this couldn’t get much worse, right? WRONG! Enter John Cena, who is about to run this movie straight into the ground, just like he did with everything else he layed his fingers on…
Anyways, with the encouragement of Luli and Glover, Cal goes to seeks his long lost brother, and manages to find him living in a trailer trash with some local white trash girl sleeping next to him. Yep, people, that was probably the coolest John Cena segment you have ever seen and you will probably ever see. He even cold-heartedly refused his brother’s plead, and closed the door in front of him. And just when we thought this move is about to pull up from dirt, it became even worse…
Cena, being Cena of course, ridden with guilt, seeks his brother out and offers him his help. And then, just out of the blue, he turns into his regular, goofy, childishly hyperactive and positive, lame comic book action hero – self, and at that point, movie becomes literally unwatchable…
Fair fight…
Suffice to say, he manages to train his weakling brother Cal in time for an open wrestling tournament, where his selfless determination (think I will puke now…) sees his brother to victory after victory over the guys 3 times Cal’s size. In the main event of the evening , we see Cal got beaten after a long and tiring fight, but he still comes of as a home town victor, for his fighting spirit. He also gets his family back, as Cena and his mother are reconciled and he comes home to live with them. Aaaaaand they lived happily ever after…
Now, I know that’s pretty much it and from this review you realize what sort of pathetic crap this movie really is, so you shouldn’t be surprised that it broke a record – it took this film only a bloody week to go from theaters to a home DVD!!!
Conclusion: Ultimately, John Cena was a downfall of this movie, just as he was a downfall of modern professional wrestling. His childish, almost comedic Superman gimmick (based on his real life self), is so retardely unrealistic, pandering and stupid, it is an affront to anyone with IQ over 50. He’s world saving, justice serving, hustle-loyalty-respect persona (that translates into everything he does – movies, wrestling, media, etc.) is so out of place in these times where world is hanging on the balance and every age group is aware of the grim days that are plaguing our lives. To a generation that thrives on Batman, and despises Superman, and especially to wrestling fans who grow up watching Stone Cold Steve Austin, Cena seems so blatantly fake, it’s almost tragic… I feel sorry for the guy, it’s not that he is that bad a wrestler (he can put on good matches from time to time), and he can be decent on a mic at times, but it’s his goofy personality and terrible gimmick that spelled the destruction of wrestling with him on the helm, and painted him, undeservingly, as a controversial figure. With that said, it may be a bit inappropriate to end the review with this tagline, but there just isn’t any better way to describe the atrocity that is this movie and modern wrestling in general: Let’s go Cena! CENA SUCKS!!!!
Worsemovies 