The Wrestler: This One Hit Me Below the Belt

I give The Wrestler nineteen staple-gun wounds out of a possible twenty-- and it's worth seeing on the big screen because the movie is almost entirely visual-- the screenplay must have been a pamphlet-- and, I must warn you, it is PAINFUL to watch this thing-- you're not sure if you're watching the decay of a fictitious character called Randy the Ram, or if it's actually Mickey Rourke falling apart on screen: it's painful to watch him take a shower, walk down the street, try to read a book, play his own character on a Nintendo game with a neighborhood kid, work the deli counter, et cetera-- and though Marissa Tomei-- Randy's stripper love interest-- is naked a lot, which was one of the reasons I wanted to see the movie, she's not very sexy: she's painfully skinny, her face is drawn and tired, and, Like Randy, she's a little too old to be in a profession that relies on a youthful body; as a bonus, the movie is set in New Jersey, and between the grainy film and the Acme that time forgot (in Rahway?) and a scene on the Asbury Park Boardwalk, this story makes the New Jersey of the Sopranos look like Beverly Hills.