Directed by: Christopher Livingston
Starring: Brian Drolet, Hoyt Richards, Taylor Cole
Well, it’s almost the end of November, and you know what that means! It’s time for me to try hastily to watch a few movies made this year so I can seem even the slightest bit relevant! It’s just so hard to want to watch new movies when you get shit like Dumbbells as the status quo. I don’t want to sound old, but everything new is bad and the neighbor kids won’t stop smoking the dope on my lawn.
A once-promising basketball star ends up working at a gym after an injury that ends his career before it begins. When the failing gym is taken over by “the world’s first male supermodel”, the two get to know each other and become good friends who try to save the business together. Also, by complete coincidence, the actors who play those lead roles are also the writers and producers of the film. Anyway, there’s some stuff about a cult led by Urkel and Fabio is there… oh, and this is one of the most misogynist movies I’ve ever seen in my life. I don’t think there’s a single instance where they could have called women “bitches” and they didn’t do it excitedly, laughing as they splash wiggling butts and boobs all over the place in a vain attempt to make the film even the least bit watchable.
The main characters in Dumbbells are the biggest pair of Mary Sues you could come up with. They’re both amazingly attractive and smart and athletic and they get the girls and make millions by the end of the movie, etc etc. The film just feels like an excuse for these two douchebags to fulfill their sad little fantasies of being constantly surrounded by hot half-naked cheerleaders. The plot is as fragile as it is predictable and every character has exactly one personality trait. And here’s a fun fact: the trait of every woman in the movie is “sexy”. The cast lists FORTY-FIVE female characters who’s names are some slight modification off of “Hot Girl” or “Sexy Girl”, not to mention the half dozen or so which have names in the credits but were never mentioned int he film. It’s fucking disgusting.
The only other thing I want to mention about this movie before I finish writing this and hopefully never think of it again is the plethora of guest stars who pop in for a scene, tell no jokes, and leave. Fabio is a fairly major part of the plot, but you’ve also got Jaleel White, Tom Arnold, Jay Mohr, and Carl Reiner, for fuck’s sake. Carl Reiner?! How could he not have known better than to appear in someone’s complicated masturbatory fantasy? He’s 92, for fuck’s sake. If Dumbbells is the last thing he’s in, it’ll be a serious disservice to an actual comedian’s career.
