Good clean fun (well, mostly clean)

Rating: 9/10 (16 June 2006)

What I really appreciate about Mike White's screenplays is that he obviously - like the young writer played by Colin Hanks in White's movie "Orange County" - loves his characters. White's talented mix of subtle, ironic humour and laugh-out-loud ridiculousness combines with Jared Hess' simple and smooth storytelling to create one of the most entertaining movies I've seen in a long time.
Add to this the comic timing and physical performance of Jack Black (who I realize is not everyone's cup of tea) and a movie that would simply have been entertaining becomes near-brilliant.
The dialogue in this movie is simple, the characters are simple, and the plot is simple. It is the careful, loving, comic storytelling of White, Black, and Hess that makes it outstanding. And if subtlety and irony are not your thing, there are a few fart jokes and fat-woman jokes thrown in to tide you over.
One refreshing aspect of this movie, in contrast to the recent big-hype "Frat Pack" films of people like Ben Stiller, the Wilsons, Will Ferrell, and Vince Vaughn, is that the protagonists are genuinely decent people who the viewer can actually care about.
On a bit of a supplemental note, I'm also a fan of professional wrestling (mostly American style, but there has been more and more lucha libre influence in recent years) and I can say the wrestling action in this movie is top-notch. The wrestling is used respectfully as a tool for the storytelling, but the respect shines through nonetheless. There are a couple of "camera trick" and wire-flying moments and a couple of editing and/or logistical mistakes (for example, a collar-and-elbow tie-up is converted directly into a vertical suplex without a shot of them changing the hold) but overall the wrestling action is clean, crisp, and a fair representation of what you would see in a luchador ring, keeping in mind that this is a movie that is telling a story, not primarily trying to accurately portray the in-ring world of lucha libre.