RUMBLE (2021)

RUMBLE (2021)

Tagline: A hero will rise. Eventually.

(Comedy, Animation, Kaiju Wrestling) [PG]

In this one, Kaiju wrestling or “monster wrestling” is a worldwide phenomenon that put the town of “Stoker” on the map. They once had the greatest monster wrestler of all time, “Rayburn”. Now there is a new monster rising named ”Tentacular”, but after a series of events, he’s leaving town to get out of Rayburn's shadow. This leaves the town with no attraction for their monster-fighting stadium. Meanwhile, Winnie, the daughter of Rayburn’s legendary trainer is dead set on saving the town’s stadium because it represents her father’s legacy. Is there a monster out there capable of rising through the ranks to take on “Tentacular” and restore glory to Stoker?  

First off the story for this movie feels very ripped off from about a million other sports-related, legacy movies. However, giving us Kaiju in the ring is actually pretty fantastic. Originally titled “Monster On The Hill” this movie didn’t garner the attention some of the other animated films that came out in 2021 did, but it’s actually pretty good.

You can never go wrong when you hire LEGO-BATMAN voice Will Arnett to play your movie's main character. You also can’t go wrong when hiring Terry Crews to do anything. The dude has range and he does great in this as the voice of “Tentacular”. It does kind of suck seeing him play an antagonist because in most things he is epically "likable", ie “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”. The movie also features outspoken and controversial sportscaster Stephen A. Smith. He basically playing himself in this as another sportscaster. If there was a weak spot in this film regarding the voice cast, for me it was Geraldine Viswanathan. She plays Winnie, basically the first or second most important character. I just didn’t feel the voice matched the character’s look or emotions. Overall the voice cast is great though. 

Animation-wise, this is probably my favorite out of the big animated movies that came out in 2021. The designs are pretty awesome and the overall look is more in my wheelhouse looking at this with an artist’s eye. While I do think they could have shown us more of the cooler designs they introduced in the opening during the actual movie, the ones we do get are not bad. 

The soundtrack for this movie is strong and we even get some mild “Eye Of The Tiger” sounding digitized score, but overall I can’t get past the feeling that we’ve seen this “living in the shadow of my father” type story one too many times. So unless you are just really into wrestling, dancing, or kaiju, this movie is not going to blow you away.

I thought I would like it quite a bit more after seeing the preview, but the opening scene had more imagination regarding the kaiju wrestling “past” than this entire movie gives us in the “now” and that is never a good sign. So while the animation is great, it's not as great as I think we could have gotten given that opening, and some of the concepts for kaiju's introduced there. Throwing a "just okay" story on top of that just wasn't enough to bump this up any higher in the rating scale. 

I have to give this one a 4 out of 7.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF PARAMOUNT ANIMATION AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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