Wrestling Isn't Wrestling (24:12)
IMDb; Wikipedia; YouTube

First of all, unrelated, I want to say that for awhile now, I've occasionally felt conflicted about whether to put reviews of short films that are originally released online in my web reviews section, or my short films section. But while watching this video on YouTube, I decided fuck it, unless it's a webseries (or part of a website like "Funny or Die" or "College Humor"), then it doesn't matter if a short film originates in a theater, at a festival, on home video, or online, or... wherever else short films might originate. From now on, reviews of short films go in the short films section of my site, and I won't stress about it.

Anyway, this was originally released on YouTube in 2015, but I first watched it in 2017. I learned of its existence while watching Anna Akana's YouTube channel, which I'd been working my way through for awhile, having only learned of its existence in 2017, so I had several years to get through. And in one episode, she mentioned this, because she played a role in it.

So, it's about wrestling. I mean, professional wrestling, which as we all know, is fake. I've never really had an interest in it, and I still don't. But after watching this video, I have zero desire to hold anyone's wrestling fandom against them. The film was made by director Max Landis, who appears as himself and basically... well, he narrates the whole thing. It's about his love of the character Triple H, and he condenses the story of the wrestler's roughly 20 year career into less than a half hour. There are lots of (male) wrestler-characters who appear in the video, and they're pretty much all played, here, by women. (One female wrestler is played by a man.) And when any of the characters speak... well, it's actually Landis speaking, but the actors do some pretty good lip-syncing (or maybe Landis is voice-syncing, it's hard to say). And um, there's a good chance you'll recognize some famous people in small roles, as like wrestling fans or whatever. And maybe you'll recognize some minor stars, like from YouTube or wherever, even if I don't know them. (Akana played "Batista," who I guess is supposed to be Dave Bautista. While checking links for this review, I saw that Milana Vayntrub was in the film, though I somehow didn't notice her while watching it. I did notice Seth Green, but aside from Akana, that's pretty much the only person I recognized, I'm afraid.)

Anyway... I dunno what else to tell you, except the film is fucking hilarious. It really made me appreciate the storytelling of professional wrestling, even if I still have no desire to actually watch it. So, I can't blame anyone who does enjoy watching wrestling for the redonkulous storylines and characters. (Though if anyone- and I can't quite believe such people exist, but they might- if anyone does watch it for the wrestling itself, that I can blame them for. That's just utterly worthy of mocking. But I digress.) So... yeah. It's just an insanely fun film.