WWE Films Puts on a Big Show with Knucklehead

From the very beginning of WWE Films’ latest release, Knucklehead, it is abundantly clear that no one is swinging for the fences. Everything about the movie is engineered with an effort to garner some kind of emotional impact while exerting as little actual effort as possible. Unfortunately, with a list of stock characters including a gentle giant, an amoral sports manager in search of redemption, and a former-stripper with a heart of gold, Knucklehead never raises itself above the level of cliché.

The film focuses on the character of Walter Krunk, a humongous orphan played by professional wrestler Paul “Big Show” Wight. When the clumsy man-child accidentally sets fire to the orphanage he has lived at his entire life, he must find a way to raise enough money to rebuild the destroyed kitchen. Luckily, Mark Feuerstein’s shifty MMA manager enters, ready to train Krunk for an amateur competition with a purse big enough to fix the orphanage and solve Feuerstein’s money problems with his rival manager, a slumming Dennis Farina.

From there, the film quickly becomes a comedic road movie, with Wight and Feuerstein hitting amateur fights along the way to a Pro-Am tournament in New Orleans. Also along for the ride is orphanage worker Melora Hardin. Though Knucklehead frequently has humorous ideas to play with (an all orthodox Jewish underground fighting league, or a promotion run by Role Models’ underutilized Bobb’e J. Thompson), it never makes good use of the comedic pieces it puts into play. Whenever possible, Knucklehead opts for broad, easy comedy, and even broader emotional beats, at least one of which is intricately linked with an extended fart-joke.

Wight, Feuerstein and Hardin do their best with the very limited material they were given to work with, but unfortunately their chemistry together is not enough to compensate for a woefully inadequate script. The film’s rushed and lazy nature even extends to its production values, with a number of artless scene transitions. Most grating, however, is the film’s sound design, which eschews an actual soundtrack for what feels like an endless series of swelling crescendos, briefly punctuated by montages set to generic contemporary rock music.

No one should go into a comedy positioned like Knucklehead expecting an enduring classic, but the set-up and considerable comedic abilities of Wight should have made for at least a few memorable scenes. Instead, Knucklehead revolves around a simplistic story told with on-the-nose dialogue and stock characters, and could only be recommended for the most enthusiastic Big Show completists.