The Wrestler: A Big Dissenting "Huh?"

So Third World Girl just doesn't understand what all the fuss is about "The Wrestler". In the last couple of weeks leading up to the Academy Awards, several folks I really respect touted this movie as the best of the year. So I saw it and was alarmed. Because I don't think "The Wrestler" is a great movie, I don't even think it's a very good movie...why such a disparity between me and such smart, discerning people?

Perhaps "The Wrestler" was a victim of over-praise. Maybe if I'd just gone into it with normal expectations, I might have been satisfied, but it all felt a little shopworn to me. Down and out performer, faded glory, estranged family, stripper with a heart of gold? I won't deny that Mickey Rourke's performance was incredible, so was Marisa Tomei's for that matter (and she has considerably less to work with) but the material... Call me a backstory addict, but without screenwriter Robert Siegel placing the character relationship in context, I just couldn't connect to the estranged daughter subplot. Without details, hints of what caused the breakdown, it seemed generic. Was that rage really all about his missing her birthday?

And to touch on the Siegel script once again, there is a line in the movie that made me cringe. The bit Marisa Tomei's character, Cassidy, delivers about Ram being the sacrificial Ram. It's the sort of thing that you write in a first draft because you think it's cool that you have a "hero as Christ metaphor" but it seemed totally out of character for Cassidy, and heavy handed to boot. It sits up there in the movie, begging to be cut.

Luckily I watched this movie with the hubby so I could ask him, was I crazy to think this movie was only average? He shrugged. He couldn't get over that all it took to get back into Evan Rachel Wood's life was a peacoat jacket.

There is no doubt that Mickey Rourke's performance as Ram is extraordinary, and I quite like Darren Aronofsky's naturalistic direction but I have to wonder to what extent the emotional response this movie evokes in an audience is tied into the emotional Rourke comeback tale...that tale that was shortchanged just a little by Sean Penn's upset win at the Oscars. Now why'd they have to go and spoil a really good story?