Movie Thoughts: Rumble (2021)

• Released: December 15th, 2021
• Directed by: Hamish Grieve
• Running time: 1h 35min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

Winnie is a girl who dreams about following into her late father's footsteps as a coach of one of a wrestling monster. She finds a potential trainee in a monster named Rayburn, but it seems the duo will have a lot to work on if they want to win anything. Winnie dreams of winning an important competition with Rayburn in order for the stadium important to her hometown to stay.

My Thoughts

Not a terrible movie, but you know how little I care about sports. Especially wrestling is just something I never saw the  appeal of, so I didn't share the main character's passion for the sport at all. 

The characters were honestly just kinda boring and generic and cookie-cutter to me. They weren't particularly interesting, both the protagonists and antagonists. I also really didn't relate to Winnie's struggle to desperately keep the stadium in her hometown. It's not like wrestling can't take place in another stadium in another town? Sure, there's a personal connection because her father trained his star champion in this particular stadium, but home is where the heart is, not where the stadium is. To me the bond between trainer and fighter should be far more important than some dumb old stadium.

The animation and visuals were decent, though, but also nothing really standout. I also wasn't particularly sold on some of the monster designs. You can get so creative with monsters, and yet some of the designs just look painfully generic (e.g. Rayburn just being a fluffy guy with horns and an underbite) or like random animals (like a bulldog or a shark). Pretty lame designs when you can get so creative with a monster. Make something big, make something unusual, make something actually terrifying or weird or standout.

So yeah, just a kinda generic movie. If you like wrestling maybe you'll like it, but for me I felt nothing for this film.