Predictable Rumble slops on the frat-boy humor

A pair of lunkheads dumber than the guys in Dumb and Dumber try to revive the career of their wrestling hero, Jimmy King, in the low-humored Ready to Rumble. <br><br>Writer Steven Brill can be counted

Friday, April 7th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

A pair of lunkheads dumber than the guys in Dumb and Dumber try to revive the career of their wrestling hero, Jimmy King, in the low-humored Ready to Rumble.

Writer Steven Brill can be counted on to never overlook any whiff of an opportunity to spill septic tank waste or have someone get kicked in the crotch or scratch for body lice. This sort of stuff sent the mostly young crowd at a recent screening into paroxysms of laughter, so Brill at least knows his audience. How many times can you knock over a bucket of slop and still have them laugh? Plenty, if Ready to Rumble is a barometer.

The movie's hook is wrestling, something that's especially popular with children and young men, presumably the people who were roaring at Brill's frat-boy humor. But although there are appearances by such bonified wrestling stars as Diamond Dallas Page, Bill Goldberg (briefly) and Sid Vicious (even more briefly), King is played by Oliver Platt. Quite possibly the lumpiest man on the planet and certainly the very opposite of the steroid-ed stars, Platt as super hero sends Ready to Rumble off to fantasy land right from the start.

David Arquette and Scott Caan play a couple of Wyoming underachievers who are professional septic tank cleaners, but live for wrestling. After a nasty promoter unexpectedly retires prima donna King by staging a humiliating match, the boys decide to track down the suddenly vanished King and return him to wrestling glory.

Soon they're on a cross-country road trip to find King. At one point they hook up with a van full of nuns who sing choruses of Kumbaya until the boys get them to switch to a little Van Halen, which is one of the funniest things in the movie.

Ready to Rumble has the classic underdog set-up, something that Brill is familiar with, having written the three Mighty Ducks movies and Heavyweights, a comedy about a group of children at a weight-loss summer camp. But King isn't the classic underdog. He turns out to be a cross-dressing alcoholic who has abandoned his family. Not exactly the stuff of legend, though that doesn't deter Arquette's Gordie Boggs nor Caan's Sean Dawkins.

These simpletons parrot the hype surrounding King, even believing that he can raise the dead.

But even they can't ignore what's in front of their eyes and hire premier wrestling coach Sal Bandini, who is played by rickety Martin Landau in a bit of casting that's as improbable as having Platt play a wrestling star, to whip King into shape. King has to be ready for his comeback double-cage match against most of the WCW stars.

Director Brian Robbins (Varsity Blues) keeps the film galloping dead on toward its predictable outcome, though its unexpected humor provides some chuckles along the way.