So not content with the pain and suffering I inflicted on myself last year with “A Karate Christmas Miracle” the Ken Del Vecchio Christmas film that was half made up of aimless talking sequences and half made up of recycled footage from an older movie Ken made about a mass shooting at a cinema…seriously…I decided once I left therapy to see if things would pick up with the Sideways sequel 2020’s “A Wrestling Christmas Miracle” spoiler alert; im back in therapy.

The films a sideways sequel in the same way that Shock Treatment is to Rocky Horror, we have a lot of actors returning to play VERY similar roles, but just with different names and slightly different behaviours. And if you think that gives this film a bit of a chance to break free from the format of the previous duff entry. Well…you couldnt be more wrong.

For a starters, I don’t really know who the main character in this film is…I mean; I know which character the film WANTS me to think is the main character. But the fact of the matter is that Mario Del Vecchio who plays Kace Gabriel in this, while given top billing, a centre spot on the poster AND the films main plot, is unmistakably absent or only really present here in a minimal capacity. Maybe he opted for a reduced role in this, maybe he had school. Who knows?

The long and short of it is Mario plays Kace, quite possibly the worlds greatest child wrestler. He’s son to the Legendary “Ajax” Gabriel (OF COURSE played by Ken Del Vecchio) and literally after about 3-5 minutes of HEAVILY censored wrestling footage with Kase, thats literally just home movie footage (im not kidding, Mario in real life is ACTUALLY a decent wrestler and the footage was from some of his matches at school, shot by Ken and presumably, because he didnt bother to get release forms for the other parents/staff or kids he’s had to block censor most of the footage barring his son) Kase goes on the news (Bit weird…but okay) to announce he’s stepping back from wrestling for 40 days for a VERY important reason.

He says that he’s been given a “Sign” that if he can write, direct, shoot and edit “The funniest movie in the world” in the 40 days leading up to christmas then his best friend Charlie who’s currently in a deep coma will wake up and thus christmas will be saved. AND! As if to make for even MORE yuk yuks, Kase is getting his dad in to help him make the movie! (For clarification; his dads played as a bit of a Jabroni) Now…you’d think with a setup like that, that THAT would be the movie. Kase and his dad making a goofy movie and all the mishaps and fun that can come from the pitfalls of film production on a deadline…BUT NO!

Because not content in wrongfooting us into believing that this was going to be some kind of christian wrestling movie only to then reveal itself to be a “Kid makes a movie” film…it then wrongfoots us AGAIN by then showing us a weird scene in a hospital which is then revealed to be a scene from Kases finished movie and that most of the 40 days has passed at this point and the films finished and ready to go! The only thing left to do is the film needs to have some backups made because it only exists on a lone hard drive in a finished form. [YOU FOOL!]

After a pep talk Ajax reveals that he’s going to be out in the Congo until AT LEAST Christmas day as he’s agreed to head out for a special event on Christmas Eve where he intends to wrestle an Elephant…yeh I don’t know either. SO! Ajax puts his brother in law Ronald in charge of making backup copies of the movie ready for the big premier and for safe keeping. [YOU FOOL!!!]

Its at this point we’re introduced to Kitty and Chuck, two “bad” actors who starred in Kases film who are low on funds and likely to lose their house if they don’t think of a plan to get some scratch. So. what do they decide to do? Well; they realise that Kaces family are probably quite well off and it is christmas so they hatch a plan to break into Ronalds car and steal all their presents, Why this involves them dressing up as the grinch and cindy lou hoo…mmm…I don’t have time to analyse their sexual deviencies…

But! They pull it off! Getting away with the gifts AND unexpectedly; Kaces Hard drive! And as soon as they realise what they have they make the decision to hold it ransom to Kases family in exchange for around a million dollars. But thats not all! to hedge their bets they also get in touch with a local distribution company, with the aim to sell the rights for the film to the company and live big off the earnings.

And…the rest of the movie from this point on could basically be summarised as Kitty and Chuck being BEYOND irritating as they repeatedly call Kases mum to arrange handover of the ransom money which, for one reason or another keeps being delayed or pushed back, Kase gets a little bit concerned about his lost movie but largely spends time with his comatosed friend telling him plot lines of the film, and Kitty and Chuck hang around cafes, bars and theatres openly plotting what to do with the footage. All the while we’re treated to largely incoherent and inconsistent clips from Kaces movie AND theres an even weirder subplot where it transpires that Ajax is a secret agent and has led a coup against the communist leader of that region of the congo and installed a puppet democracy. He also didnt get chance to wrestle the elephant because, and I quote “He was probably a scared commie.”

In a film that underran SO badly it has 12 minutes of end credits, Will Kase get his christmas wish? Will Kitty and Chuck manage to sell the film and move to mexico. And…why is this film so inherently riddled with anti-communist propaganda? Seriously; its like if you went to a hot dog eating contest and found out it was actually a christian recruitment drive. Anyway; all this and more will perplex and bamboozle you into tapping out, when you watch…A wrestling Christmas Miracle.

And I don’t really know what I expected with this film. Like; if ever there was a moment where I “touched the stove” burnt myself, and then went “Mmm…but was it REALLY hot?” it was this movie. For starters, the script is pretty much just a re-run of the original film, just without the weird Dollar store “Twin Peaks” overtones. Whichever way you cut it the film at it’s core is still just “A kid has to do a special thing leading up to christmas in order to ensure a miracle happens” which is hardly a constructive stretch from the original.
What baffles me the most about the script for this film is they had 2 completely OPEN goals to work with in terms of what the actual plot for it could have been.

Even if you didnt want to make a movie based on the title and marketing of your film, they still could have run with “A kid has 40 days to make the funniest movie in the world to wake his friend up from a coma” there would have been some nice scope for character development between Kase and his dad, you could have had some great comedy moments of everything that can go wrong on a film set combined with the idea of a meathead wrestler and his son trying to get to grips with the subtle nuance of shot composition or blocking and all the pratfalls that could happen with that disconnect., there’s even scope for more emotional developments as the deadline for the film to be completed gets closer.

It can’t even be argued that they went with the weird repetitious bollocks we ended up with because of budget, because they actually rented out some kind of hospital set to shoot the movie within the movie AND they hired Gilbert Godtfried. THEY LITERALLY could have just, shot more and made Kases movie the movie! And it probably would have been more consistent and interesting than what we ultimately ended up with.

The act structure for this thing is almost non existent, taking out the 12 minutes of credits leaves us with a 65 minute feature where the first act is 10 minutes, the 3rd act is 15 and the 2nd act is a bloated 40 minute mess of whatever the editors could scrape off the floor. I cant find proof that a script for this movie even exists, and im MORE than inclined to believe that large chunks of this film were improvised because the dialogue is fumbly, stiff and has a vibe of “what would people THINK is funny or interesting?” about it. There are lines that make almost no sense.

In the opening of the film for example Ajax is watching Kases movie and comments that theres a lot of “Bleeps” in the film which Kase puts down to there being bad language in the script he didnt know he wasnt allowed to include. Now; there are multiple problems with that opening sequence. Chief amongst them being, their arnt that many bleeps in the scene that gets raised…we’re talking 1, maybe 2 tops. But MORE crucially; while they censor words like “Castration” and “Prostitute” that really DON’T need bleeping they DON’T censor words like (and apologies in advance) “Midget”. AND Ken for a more than decent chunk of the films runtime plays a “comedy wheelchair bound deaf guy”…who just sort of…flails about and makes vaguely sign language based symbols…y’know, for a laugh! Jesus christ…

They spend a frankly obscene amount of the movie trying to make the “Whats with all the bleeping?” gag a thing…despite the fact that…there just isnt that much bleeping going on, and anyone whose seen a television in the last 50 years will surely know what a censor bleep is without having to be overtly informed of that?

Though that may be giving the characters WAY too much credit here as the script writes them as border idiots. Kitty and Chuck are basically playing children. They lack a grasp of basic adult understandings and largely screech, squark and “idiot” their way through there scenes in a BEYOND annoying way. Ajax is written almost like he has an on/off switch. One minute hes a loving and considerate father and husband, the next he’s fuckin’ “Grape Ape” just shouting and being weirdly melodramatic. Kase has a couple of weird ticks but is largely muted…mainly just parroting things other cast members said 10 minutes ago, and Ronald appears to literally only be in this movie to pull comedy faces and make wailing noises as and when things happen.

Theres just, so much odd stuff to unpack with this movie…like the strange anti-communist rhetoric that just keeps being drip fed into the movie throughout the runtime. Like…mentioning it once or twice as a bit of a joke, fine. But the film gets weirdly “into” the idea that Ken Del Vecchio’s character is some kind of great liberator who manages to free a left wing country from the clutches of socialism…all the while not really doing all that much to show how “Actually great” the US is…I mean…how good can a country be when two bumbling idiots can break into your car, and hold a movie they find in there to ransom for a million dollars, while claiming they now own the rights to the movie, and NOT ONLY does noone question this, but the police are also helpless (see: too lazy) to intervene?…yeh…sounds like a hoot.

Then There’s the end of the film itself. So at the end of the film, and spoilers from here on out, Kase gets the movie back and plays it for Charlie…who doesn’t wake up…Kase is a little downbeat, but for some BIZARRE reason decides the best thing to do with his comatosed friend who for some reason isnt in a hospital, is to get him in a headlock…which SOMEHOW wakes Charlie up from his coma and saves the day…now. Overlooking the fact that his friend, if he WAS in a coma, wouldn’t just be chilling at home in his bed with no support (then again, this is the american healthcare system we’re dealing with) why on EARTH would Kase think it was appropriate to do wrestling moves on his comatosed friend?

Why did the scriptwriters essentially waste 50 minutes of my time on the “We have to make a movie to save my friend” sub plot, only to then essentially airlock it at the last minute? They say that a films enjoyment can be had in it’s journey, not just strictly it’s resolution…but if the films actively shite throughout and then disappoint’s on the ending as well ON PURPOSE. Where does that leave me honestly? I’ll tell you, watching “A Wrestling Christmas Miracle” apparently…

And thats not even mentioning the film within a film which runs infrequently across the whole runtime. And I’ll be honest I have no idea on exactly whats going on in those sections. It just seems to be an almost absurdist surrealist nightmare piece about a nurse whose sentenced to work in a hospital where everyones a bit daffy orrr…something? There arnt really any jokes in those sections of the film, just weird happenings like a guy pummeling a cherry pie sat on a bed, or a court session being held in a hospital reception…I don’t know what vibe they were going for. But given this came from the mind of a child “in film” i’d have more questions than answers honestly.

Ultimately; what we have here is a script thats incoherent and inconsistent with non existent pacing, poor act structuring, terrible dialogue that feels unnaturally stilted and unconfidently improvised. That has weird right leaning hyper fixations that it just CAN NOT get rid of and not only fails to sell itself to its audience on the premise it’s supposedly built on, but cant even sell itself to its audience on the premise it wrongfoots you on.

The Script was written by Ken Del Vecchio and Buddy Fitzpatrick who both play Ajax and Chuck respectively in the movie, we’ve covered both Ken and Buddy previously in my “Karate Christmas Miracle” review but, as of the time of writing this is their last written/produced credit to date! So, I really hope they come back this christmas with another “Miracle” film to turn this duology into a trilogy! Stepping up to the plate to direct this time, we have Chris T. Anthony, Chris has 2 directing credits, his first being a short film from 2013 and his last being this film. He’s really more of a cinematographer honestly; in that field he has 11 credits and still seems to be fairly active to this day.

On the direction front…well; its a bit better than “A Karate Christmas Miracle” My big issue with the original was that the vast majority of the film looked like it was shot freehand, on the fly and barring a few notable exceptions it just looked like someone making a film for fun, with friends, which is fine if you don’t plan on making it a studio based release and charging people actual money for the privilege of watching the thing. If you DO charge for that and you arnt an SOV film from the 80s or 90s…then im only going to rain down with violence and hellstorm at the audacity of charging money for an unprofessional and barely coherent product.

A Wrestling Christmas Miracle, barring the opening and closing wrestling scenes themselves which is most definitely just home movie footage. Feels at least a little bit more professional by contrast. A lot of the scenes are clearly somewhat planned and while it does have a bit of a whiff of the “Gun for hire” about it in terms of strong and clear visions, it at least does have a few interesting choices in scene structure, set construction and location work. Its not overly reliant stock footage, on weird CGI effects or odd colour grades or other weirdness. Don’t get me wrong! it still does *loosely* play with those elements a bit. But by contrast to “Karate” It’s generic as balls!. it’s at least moving in the right direction in terms of making a product that I could believe was sold for actual real world money. But it’s still not great.

Now direction of the cast. THAT. is something entirely different. With the script being SO unwieldy and messy I genuinely don’t know how much of what im seeing is improvised and how much is the dialogue as written and performed. If im going off my gut instinct. Id say there was a lot more improvisation than initially planned. And the only reason I say that is because my gut is really giving me the vibe that this film was cast directed by basically telling the performers to feel the delivery out, and inevitably things would get a bit silly, and then it creates a bit of a feedback loop where everyone THINKS they’re the most hilarious people in the world…but what is actually translated is some of the most irritating performances put to digital. But more on that later. The cast do seem to work with there set spaces and locations reasonably well given what they’ve got to work with. And I think the director manoeuvres the cast through those spaces quite well. But in terms of getting the right performance for the tone of this film. I absolutely do not believe they achieved that goal effectively…in my opinion.

On the cine front, this film actually kind of performs a miracle. Almost every set is decked to the nines in christmas related fodder, trees, tinsel, wreaths you name it. theres even people singing christmas carols on and off throughout. And yet SOMEHOW, this is probably one of the least christmassy movies I think i’ve seen to date. There are a few reasons for this, the total lack of snow is probably the biggest issue, its hard to make your film look christmassy when theres intermittent shots of vibrant green front yards and largely blue skies on display.

But I think the biggest issue is around the colour grading for this film, I’ve mentioned before that colours and grading in your christmas film are incredibly important to setting the mood and tone of the movie, and it’s not that hard to follow really to get semi decent results. The rule of thumb is, when your outside you want the film to look as cold as possible, you want to utilise cool colours in set design and grade as cool as possible, because you want the weather outside to look frightful, conversely when your shooting indoors you want to give the grade a warmth, something more towards the orange, yellow and red side of the specturm that plays against the more festive reds and greens of christmas decorations. Something that makes that fire look so delightful. It’s basic, but cool external shots make people subconciously think of winter, it makes them cold and gets them feeling a bit more christmassy. And equally making internals more warmer on the grade gives people that feeling of being snuggled up in their warm house at christmas.

You can play around with those elements however you like to play with your audience, for example a cooler grade on internal shots in a christmas film could be used to highlight a particularly depressing moment in the film or a warm external grade could be used in flashbacks to show “the olden days of christmasses past”.

This film doesn’t really care for film 101 as a rule. All the internal shots are graded white. Not cool, not warm. White. Which leaves the audience subconsciously directionless. What are they supposed to feel when the grade is basically just shrugging at them? As a result of the muted grade and several HEAVY shallow depth of field shots, all the christmas decoration just kind of blends into the background and become indistinct. It might as well not be there for how defined it is within the shot. And because of that and several location shots throughout the film that totally lack anything festive it just really killed the idea that this was in any way a Christmas movie.

Shot composition is *largely* acceptable. There was nothing glaring that came to my mind in terms of poor composition or line crossing. But there was nothing particularly inspired either. Framing at times could maybe be a little off, with head and shoulder shots sometimes being just a smidge too low or too high for the frame. To be honest, its all kind of unremarkable. I’ve seen worse, but i’ve DEFINITELY seen better. Its an improvement on the original by a tiny margin, but it still has a long way to go to be “good”.

Performance wise, well…we have most of the cast from “A Karate Christmas Miracle” back here for this one and my opinions on them from that review haven’t really changed. The only thing I need to say is that Buddy Fitzpatrick and Julie McCullough as Kitty and Chuck respectively are exquisite agony to me. I think had they played their characters with just a hint more nuance and self awareness they probably could have stuck the landing as “The right kind of stupid” unfortunately; their performances really feel like they were just egged on to go as over the top as they could in playing how much of an idiot they could be and its just insufferable. It really takes the movie down a peg for me…and it wasnt exaclty high flying to begin with.

The new cast in this picture are few and far between. With even the movies big star Gilbert Godtfried just looking…tired, for the 50 seconds he’s on screen. But honestly? when I say that the best actors in this film are just about acceptable, the average performance in this is poor and the worst performances are unbearable. I hope that sets the tone for you as to exactly what you’re getting into.

And finally; the soundtrack. It’s all stock tracks, thats it. Literally they’ve bought half a dozen christmas tracks from a library site and just drenched the film in them. Sometimes it’s passable, other times its painful, the instance that sticks in my mind is where they have Charlies mum singing a christmas carol and they dub in a stock track version of the carol shes singing…only they’re both playing in different keys, so it sounds awful. Its a generic score thats bland, uninteresting and just plane yucky.

And equally it’d be amiss of me to say the audio quality throughout is a mixed bag too. Some scenes have crisp audio that sounds more than decent, other sequences have audio thats echoey, unbalanced and sounds tinny. I presume its because they couldnt place a mic in some of the wider shots without it being on screen. But i’d rather some half decent ADR than poor on set audio honestly…

A Wrestling Christmas Miracle was released in 2020 by Justice for All productions I own the DVD version, im sure there has to be a bluray copy floating out there but for the life of me I cant find one after having a look around online. Extras are ultra limited, a trailer for the film is about as good as it gets. And it is available on streaming services if your morbidly curious…but honestly; i’d say save your time.

While I do think there are some areas where “A Wrestling Christmas Miracle” outperforms “A Karate Christmas Miracle” those elements are narrow and few and far between. While the cine I would argue is at least a slither more professional and the direction is maybe a smidge tighter. It has more than its fair share of issues, with a soundtrack that literally could have come from the youtube audio library, a total lack of life and definition in the colour grading and editing, direction that, at best is functional and at worst grating. And a script that is just awful in my opinion, with dated references, poor pacing, a bloated and rushed act structure, poor dialogue and a drifting, aimless vision that fails to satisfy, vastly under delivers on what it promises and has a sharp and hard ending that, while not quite as blunt as “Karates” ending is still pretty tone deaf.

I had a pretty bad time with this one, its ultimately just a quite boring film. Definitely one to use to test your metal if your looking for a genuinely bad and not enjoyable experience, its mercifully short which is about the only good thing going for it, but yeh. You guys can do so much better this christmas season, DEFINITELY one to avoid.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/a-wrestling-christmas-miracle/