Ewwwwwwwwwwww!! I just got finished watching this movie, and I am about to run to Blockbuster and demand my $6 back for this thing!
When I rented the movie, I did so under the falsehood that it may have real footage of backyard wrestling for more than the opening credits (plus a few good shots of FMW near the end). I was even more excited when the heavy metal riffs came on for the movie's theme song, thinking I was in for 2 hours of blood, gore and mayhem. INSTEAD, what I (and hopefully never you will) end up with is a former Power Ranger and a "sissy boy" form a "tag team" for 96 minutes of pure action - purely boring.
My main problem with the movie was that for something that is supposed to be as unpredictable and violent as backyard wrestling, it was in fact more scripted and carefully prepared than a David Arquette match. It is a sport enjoyed by youths, some as young as 7 or 8, something this movie doesn't show us (dear God we might offend someone or something). As for violence, aside from the one moment involving barbed wire in whence someone actually bleeds (and then the blood mysteriously disappears in the next scene a la David Copperfield), the film is more tame and gentile than anything done on WWF TV, now or yesteryear. "Oh no, body slam on a bed matress, the humanity of it!" Where are the light bulbs, the cheese graters, the rakes, the bags of nails, and the twisting double moonsaults off of garages? Not here, because that might just make backyard wrestling look like the horrible menace that it is, and we wouldn't want that, would we? Instead we see hundreds upon hundreds of punches, kicks, and elbow drops! Oh, and a headbutt too! I could go on for days and probably write an entire 30 volume set of why I disliked this movie, but I won't - why rob you of the joy of seeing this garbage?
Overall, the film was lame, boring, had incredible plot holes, had an incredibly lame love scene (knocks down door, pushes woman on bed and says after a few weeks of knowing her says "I love you," completely out of nowhere! Ugh, my girlfriend is laughing hysterically at the corniness of it all!!) and if anything made the world of backyard wrestling seem acceptable, if not doable to a generation of impressionable youth. If they were getting 50,000 "hits" a day to their website, how come there were still only 10 or 12 people watching each match? Even the "big one" was only attended by 30 rich white men.
On a side note, I'm sure other fans of Mick Foley were as p****d as I when they heard that according to the Power Ranger that "Mick Foley got his start by jumping off a roof through a bunch of tables, right into the WWF." True, if you forget his years in the Indies, ECW and WCW before coming to the WWF. Good to see someone read the first three pages of "Have A Nice Day."
I swear I will never watch this movie again, and except for comedic value or to spite those I do not like, tell another soul to do the same. If you want to watch a wrestling video that shows the true sense of the business, albeit a little outdated, go rent "Beyond The Mat," at least it doesn't try to BS you like Backyard Dogs does. If anything, Backyard Dogs will teach your brother/son/friends that if you particpate in backyard wrestling (ie. destroying, mutilating, disfiguring the crap out of other children) that big things will happen in life and that they will be huge in the wrestling business. The makers of this film ought to be ashamed for teaching such a horrible lesson to children.
