By Geno McGahee
I watch a lot of family movies. As a father of two, I have seen FROZEN and TOY STORY 1-3 about a million times. The latest movie on a loop in my house is BIG HERO 6. So, when the opportunity arises to watch something different, I’m game. My 5-year-old daughter, Julie, showed interest in RUSSELL MADNESS, mainly because she loves dogs and this one features a talking dog. Talking dogs are the thing. I own every one of those “BUDDIES” movies that have a group of talking dogs and little people usually. I can’t stand those but I suffer through them and I suspected that this movie may be painful. I had no idea…
Nate (David Milchard) comes from a wrestling family. His grandfather owned a small arena where he held pro-wrestling events. That came to an end when an obvious Vince McMahon-spoof, Mick Vaughn (John Ratzenberger), arrived and attempted to monopolize the sport. When Nate’s grandfather refuses, Vaughn just buys all of the wrestlers and the small promotion closed its doors.
Years later, Max (Mason Vale Cotton), Nate’s son, becomes very interested in the wrestling history of the family and convinces his dad to restart the promotion. Unfortunately they cannot attract that many good wrestlers, but get a runaway dog named “Russell,” and he finds his way to the ring and wins a match. Russell becomes a huge attraction and it attracts the attention of Vaughn, leading to a tag team match between Vaughn’s two big stars against a small dog and a child in Max for ownership of the small arena and of Russell.
One of the bad guy wrestlers was Johnny Hennigan. He was an actual star pro wrestler for most of the promotions during his time. I remember him as Johnny Nitro, but when I stopped watching, he became Johnny Morrison. Now he’s going by his real name, apparently, and pursuing acting. This is a horrid movie, but in the defense of Hennigan, he really tried to play it up. He just had nothing to work with.
The problem with this film was not the acting because the actors actually worked out pretty well. Ratzenberger tried very hard to make his role work as the bad guy and really cheesed it up. I have enjoyed the majority of his work, but this screenplay is just a bad copy of THE SEARCH FOR SANTA PAWS…a terrible movie as well.
I will say that I have always liked Will Sasso from MAD TV, but as I watched this I wanted to strangle whoever did the voice for the monkey, “Hunk.” If this movie had a real budget, I would have assumed that it was Adam Sandler. It was that annoying. But no, it was Sasso. What a terrible character that monkey was.
RUSSELL MADNESS is pure shit. There are six writers responsible for this apparently. At least they are sharing the blame. I’ve seen so many bad family movies, but I can’t remember one this bad. For any parents out there that are interested in this title, I will say this. My daughter did say it was a good movie and did like the monkey and dog. So, if you just sit your kid in front of the TV and put this on, it’s OK. But if you have to watch it with them, you’re going to suffer.
Rating: 3/10 – Points given for the actors trying so hard…
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