A Wrestling Christmas Miracle

I don't even know where to begin with for this movie...?

Mainly it was just a bunch of random segments trying to tie together to one cohisive story that really made no sense at all...!

The best I could gather from the story: it's about a junior wrestler who gives up the sport to make a movie he hopes will wake up his comatose friend for Christmas, with the help from his father who is an Olympian wrestler with a strange side career himself - and that's how I can describe it to the best of my ability.

To call it a movie is a bit of a stretch - I would rather describe it as a fever dream that had somewhat of a concept behind it.

I am a self-created expert on terrible films. After reading the funny book "The 50 Worst Films of All Time", I decided to see all 50 and review them. Then, wanting to see more dreck, I saw nearly all of the Bottom 100 on IMDB...and many hundreds more awful films. I mention this because I'd place "A Wrestling Christmas Miracle" near the bottom of all these terrible films...it's that bad.

The project was apparently the brainchild of Ken Del Vecchio, who apparently was behind quite a few other films...including a film which is almost a prequel to this film, "A Karate Christmas Miracle". It has a score of 1.8 on IMDB...even lower than the 2.2 for this film. The boy who plays the lead is Mario Del Vecchio, who is probably Ken's son...though I wasn't able to figure out their exact relationship. But since the boy is only 11 in this film, I won't criticize his acting, as it would seem cruel.

This is the insane plot: Kace (Mario) is an athlete who is amazing at wrestling and football. His father is an Olympic champion who won't be home for Christmas because he's due to wrestle an elephant and a giraffe in the Congo. But he really is going there to lead a coup. As for Kace, he's given up sports to devote all his time to making a movie which will be so funny and wonderful that it will awaken his best friend who is in a coma. But an idiot and his even dumber girlfriend (who were in the movie) have stolen the only copy of the movie and want a million dollars or they'll sell it to some sleazy filmmaker. Also, at times, the film is a film within a film, with a large list of Z-list actors in it, including Todd Bridges (Willis from "Different Strokes"), Jimmy Walker (the guy from "Good Times", not the dead ex-mayor of NY), Gilbert Gottfried (the annoying voice of that duck from insurance ads) and Michael Winslow (the man who makes goofy sounds in the "Police Academy" movies).

Does any of the story make sense or make you laugh? No. Instead, it honestly looks like a vanity project some friends made, though how they got the Z-listers in it, I have no idea (perhaps they offered them a free lunch). All I know it that it is unfunny and bad...jaw-droppingly bad. But considering how few people have seen it, I strongly doubt if it could ever make it to the IMDB Bottom 100, as they require 10000 votes first...and this one falls far short. Overall, a film bad enough to challenge the "Fred" movies for a spot on anyone's list of terrible movies.

I, thankfully, did not watch this abomination. I did, however, listen to the review by the God Awful Movies team. Note that I employ a 1 to 5 scale when rating movies because I feel anything more fine grained is silly. So my two star rating really means one star. Nonetheless, I was sorely tempted to give this a single star as an indication that it has zero redeeming values. If Ken Del Vechio had been a film school student this, and every one of his other films, would have been graded as a failure. Even his previous film, "A Karate Christmas Miracle" was (marginally) better than this stillborn waste of celluloid.

Okay, this is not a great movie. Adjust your expectations. It's an independently produced, low budget effort that seems to be one of at least two vehicles conceived to push the acting/athletic efforts of Mario Del Vecchio. That said, it's an amusing, annoyingly charming holiday effort that's (gasp!) safe for families and kids. Really. Everyone seems to be having a good time--the script is preposterous, and the dialogue so over the top, that the actors can't do anything more than ham it up. Maybe it was the spirit of the season, but I really couldn't diss this movie too hard. It's not an endurance test like, say, "Things" or "Manos the Hand of Fate", but it's also not a camp fest or some vehicle for unintentional irony. Mario Del Vecchio may never hit it big as a child actor, but this good-natured little flick certainly possesses plenty of holiday cheer.

So bad it might be good. Straightaway reminiscent of "Melos: The Hands of Fate" in terms of production quality, storytelling, acting, et cetera. Fully expect this to appear on MST3K (if they're still around). The only legitimate wrestling appears in the opening montage, showing that the boy has wrestling talent. Elsewhere this is pure dreck, full of idiot characters along with a small smattering of Big Time wrestling.

Not enough thought has gone into the script. For example: one scene displays wordplay on "bear" versus "bare," as in "the cupboard is bare" versus "a bear in the woods." No one considers that someone might be "bare" in the woods, or that there could be a "bear" hiding in a cupboard. Nor does this extend to anyone needing some "Bayer" aspirin for a possible headache, in which there might be some "Bayer" in a medicine cabinet.