Review for Knucklehead

Knucklehead is an awful film. Let me just get that out of the way. I won't sugar coat it or try and find the goodness, because quite frankly there isn't any. Watching this film made me feel slightly ashamed to be a wrestling fan or a fan of comedy films in general. Because it so wanted to be a comedy that it hurts watching this film try. Maybe that's the problem, it's trying so hard that it's pulling all the things that could have been funny (Wrestling a bear, getting stuck on a coach toilet, burning down a kitchen) and forcing it so far down our throats that we choke on the lack of finesse in its execution.
The story follows Walter (Big Show Paul Wight) who is an orphan who is still living in the orphanage where he grew up and was never adopted. If you don't know, the real man Paul Wight at nearly 500lbs and at seven foot is a legitimate giant and so finds it hard to fit in. When he accidently burns down the orphanages' kitchen he must find the money to repair it or it will be shut down. Obviously the writers had been watching The Blues Brothers and Kingpin before they picked up their pens! Enter Eddie (Mark Feuerstein) a former MMA fighter who is now a manager and coach at the local gym. He owes money to a local gangster and on discovering the awesome power of Walter convinces Sister Francesca to allow him to take Walter to an MMA tournament with a huge prize money that will pay for the damages. This leads to a road trip in which Walter goes through a number of fights, including the not so hilarious fight with a bear. Accompanying them both is Mary O'Connor (Melora Hardin) who acts as a conscience for the two and also a love interest for Eddie. She also later strips to her underwear to take part in a girl on girl brawl which is probably the only reason to watch the film. Of course the film is about discovering who you are and being comfortable with that and ends almost how you can predict it.
When WWE announced they would be going in to film production I had horrible flashbacks to Hulk Hogan's No Holds Barred and Suburban Commando. But with the success of The Rock, maybe WWE knew how to create a good movie. Boy was I wrong! WWE seems unable to capture any audience whether it is critical or commercial and the main reason is that they seem to think that people will watch a film out of loyalty to the WWE. I can understand this for Hulk Hogan, John Cena and even The Rock, but when you take a star who is not exactly the biggest (at least not in name or face value) as The Big Show and you throw him into the leading role you simply cannot expect it to produce gold. It never worked with Hogan and Cena and only works with The Rock when he is a supporting player. The only wrestler to ever truly own a picture is Roddy Piper in John Carpenter's They Live and the reason is that it is not about Piper it is all about the script. That's the problem with WWE. Until they get the script right they simply cannot expect gold to be produced.
The DVD includes a number of special features including a photo gallery, bloopers, two featurettes and a commentary and I was so glad that my disk did not include any of them. Though I think it would have been interesting to listen to the commentary to see if the creators could explain what they were thinking when they made this film.
Knucklehead is (as I said at the beginning) an awful film. Not in that cult 'so bad it's good' way, but in that 'so bad it's awful'. However, with WWE announcing more films in a similar vein, until someone smacks Vince McMahon and reminds him that he is in the wrestling business, we shall continue to get poorly executed nonsense like this.