This movie is so much more enjoyable than it has any business being. I don't know if this was in the original children's book but I was dying at Tana playing a wrestler struggling with a bad knee. He didn't have to act to pull that one off, that's for sure.
I was also dead @ Okada (in this movie called Dragon George
) being booked even stronger than Gedo does.
Speaking of the Dragon George name, all the fictional names had me rolling like King Of Beasts - Lion Pro Wrestling and the Z-1 Climax tournament.
For whatever reason Goto and Ishii (shown for ten seconds having a match) are the only wrestlers to be featured under their own names while folks like Baretta, Taguchi and Makabe get aliases.
Anyway, it's actually a pretty funny movie especially since it's really just a glorified kids movie, but in the end the only bad moment I experienced was beforehand when the programmer who introduced the movie kept calling it
"show wrestling" instead of pro wrestling and said that even though he thinks wrestling is stupid he still found the movie to be good. Me and a couple of other wrestling fans all stared at dude like
for the rest of his introduction after that bullshyt.
Banderas and Almodóvar, that's a scary sight.
The film is autobiographical so Banderas basically plays the famous director and it is one of his best roles. The aging director who has essentially retired (because of a creative block) is in constant pain from different illnesses, but when he rekindles a relationship with the lead actor of his first movie, he's introduced to heroin (smoking) which gives him comfort as he reminisces on his past as a boy (with Penélope Cruz playing his mother) and tries to figure out his current life. Like all Almodóvar films it's beautiful to look at, and although it doesn't feature much of a narrative it still keeps things going and keeps things interesting, and the result is a very good film. But again, it is Banderas who makes it must-see with his brilliant performance.