When I was in grade school, I spent almost every Sunday afternoon watching professional wrestling. Eventually, the appeal waned and I turned to another staple of Sunday afternoon television: Professional bowling, which might have been a step forward or a step back, depending on where you stand. However, even if my love of pro wrestling had remained intact through the years, I'd like to think that I'd be nowhere as dumb today as Gordie and Sean, the WCW-obsessed dweebs in Ready to Rumble.

Gordie (David Arquette) and Sean (Scott Caan) spend their days vacuuming out the contents of portable toilets and their evenings preaching the virtues of pro wrestling to the only minds more vacuous and malleable than theirs -- those of the neighborhood 12-year-olds. The leader of their pro wrestling pantheon is Jimmy King (Oliver Platt), the current holder of the WCW championship belt and the embodiment of everything Gordie and Sean would like to be.

On the night when Gordie and Sean finally get their chance to watch King wrestle in the flesh, he's defeated by Diamond Dallas Page (playing himself) through the machinations of the brains behind the WCW, Titus Sinclair (Joe Pantoliano). The pair decides to track down King and restore him to his rightful throne.

The King they discover is a grumpy lout of a man who walked out on his wife and kids, but nothing is able to shake Gordie and Sean's belief in the man's goodness and invulnerability. They set up a cage (re)match against Page and take King to train under Sal (Martin Landau) a cantankerous "old school" wrestler of prodigious strength.

Much like the sport upon which it focuses, Ready to Rumble puts all its eggs in one basket and puts up a good visual front at the expense of everything else. Landau's cameo is a prime example of this. Is Landau funny because he's given good dialogue or a three-dimensional character to explore? No. He's funny because there's something inherently hilarious about seeing an old man bitch-slap Speedo-clad beefcakes around a homemade wrestling ring.

Physically, Oliver Platt fit his role to a "T." Unfortunately, he was short-changed in the dialogue department, and wasn't used to even a fraction of his full potential in Ready to Rumble.

One might argue that Rose McGowan (as sexpot Sasha) also got gypped in the dialogue department, but nobody in the theater (myself included) was bemoaning the fact that she didn't have more to say. Her costumes were tight and short - mission accomplished, Ms. McGowan.

The only exception to this visual rule is Scott Caan. He's far too photogenic to be appearing in a comedy as somebody's straight man...and how do you play a straight man to Arquette's facial-tic brand of humor, anyway? Stand back and hope that you don't get any on you when those veins in his forehead and neck eventually pop?

And speaking of Arquette, you know your acting career is in trouble when you can elicit less laughter from your lines than you can from screaming at the top of your lungs and making your face as red as a beefsteak tomato. And for God's sake, man, stop squinting and twitching all the time. It makes me nervous...

Although Ready to Rumble has its moments of humor, most of the laughter takes place on the same level as physical reflex and doesn't bother consulting the brain as to whether or not it's funny. The primary audience for Ready to Rumble are wrestling fans, who will appreciate the numerous cameos by WCW wrestlers and its insinuation that, beneath the scripted storylines and pulled punches, there exists a world of real vendettas, plots and injuries. This choice of audiences is ironic, given that Ready to Rumble doesn't portray a single pro wrestling fan who is smart enough to find his way out of a wet paper bag.

D. Patrick Seitz recently put down roots in Los Angeles, where he's trying his hand at acting, writing, and singing.

Got a problem? Email Patrick at filmmonthly@hotmail.com