Shameless Self Expression

Smart high school student Scott Baio gets involved in an explosion at the school science lab, which leaves him with newfound special powers: Telekinesis. Enter opportunistic best friend Willie Aames who sees dollar signs in his bud’s special powers. Felice Schachter plays a geeky girl clearly crushing on Baio, Heather Thomas is the school hottie, Scatman Crothers the alcoholic sports coach. A pre- “Charles in Charge” team-up of Scott Baio and Willie ‘Bibleman’ Aames, idols for teen girls of the 80s, this 1982 film from Robert J. Rosenthal (whose only other directing effort was a previous comedy called “Malibu Beach” ) and his co-writer Bruce Rubin (who wrote “Blood Rage” after this and…that’s about it) has a bit of a cult following. One of the few 80s sex comedies I’d yet to see, it proved to be a massive disappointment. It’s stupid, boring, and aside from some clearly post-production nudity, closer to one of those goofy Disney comedies Kurt Russell made early in his career...

Filmmaker and wrestling fan Barry Blaustein may have annoyed those in the industry by focussing on a lot of the negative aspects to wrestling with this 1999 documentary. However, as someone who watched WWF/E from 1986-1993 and 2006 to the present, I’ve gotta say, negative aspects or not, this is fascinating, sad, and pretty damn accurate. This review will mostly be from the POV of a wrestling fan, but hopefully it won’t be entirely useless to those non-fans strangely curious enough to click on a review of the film as well. I obviously wasn’t watching wrestling when this film was shot and released but I knew enough of the then-current talent to get by and certainly knew about the older wrestlers it focuses on. I had also seen “Wrestling With Shadows” and the awful “Wrestlemania IX” , as Bret Hart was my favourite wrestler at the time I’d stopped watching – and still is my all-time favourite today. Seriously, I’m still pissed about the ending to “WM IX” (I also disagree with the Sc...