Unreal.

Unreal.

RT rating: None

Synopsis: Narrated by entertainer Steve Allen, this revealing documentary traces professional wrestling's history from its early years as a bona fide athletic event to its current incarnation as a soap opera with a referee. Interviews with fans, sports historians and wrestling stars -- including Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Killer Kowalski, Gorgeous George and Classie Freddie Blassie -- are interspersed with footage of modern and classic matches. (Yeah. I THINK this is a mistake.)

One of the biggest problems with entertainment in the last decade is the rise of reality TV shows. What began with a simple way to get around striking writers by following police officers on the road to catch drunken, belligerent rednecks beating their spouses and in the process, ruining the good name of a white muscle shirt forever, reality television shows only managed to get WORSE in the 20 years since then. Cops attacking drunken idiots gave way to celebrating young idiots getting drunk, which gave way to giving money to people you want to beat the crap out of, which gave way to a happy ending of celebrating stupid, possibly spoiled people- preferably if they have way too many kids or are challenged with some disability that the producers can simultaneously claim they're promoting awareness of and sell to networks hoping to find people who'll laugh at the freaks.

However, no matter how bad this gets, at least they don't expect us to pay to see these idiots. Luckily, when reality TV stars transfer to motion pictures themselves, the results usually tend to involve the winner failing miserably, proving that people will only watch idiots on reality shows if they're not forced to pay for the privilege. That didn't stop producers from trying to market a short-lived and 'lucrative' mini-genre of reality movies [for people who want to say they watch documentaries to sound smart, but want to remain idiots, they're perfect], with films like "The Real Cancun" providing important examples of movies to end up in DVD stores' remainder bins and pre-owned discount racks for years to come, hoping for some idiot to pick it up and think it's an off-brand "Girls Gone Wild" video.

That brings us to the movie "Unreal", which is one of the most perfect post-modern results of the whole genre: A scripted movie with the plot of pretending it's a reality TV-styled movie. While the Rotten Tomatoes Synopsis was a visible problem, giving the wrong synopsis [while it claims to be a documentary about professional wrestling on the site, the film is actually a movie pretending to be like "Blind Date", a show that amused stoned people looking for anything to watch at 3 a.m. and people who want to see pretty colors and pop-ups alike]. While most things would have this as a problem, I actually found this perfectly appropriate for the style of this movie.

For years, I thought that the pinnacle of reality television was the VH-1 series "Hogan Knows Best". To the layperson, this series was just another of the lucrative reality TV genre of "find some '80s icon turned '00s relic and show people how they live", in this case, using legendary wrestler Hulk Hogan and his family. On paper, this would be just another show similar to "The Osbournes" and its ilk, simple, effective, and disposable. However, no one knew at the time that pro wrestling fans are as rabid about the sports entertainment that they love as the traditional sports fan would be for their favorite team. This was found out when, during a seemingly throwaway moment for this show, Hogan set his semi-essential pop star daughter up with the son of a former pro wrestler...which was soon found out by wrestling newsletters as having been rigged by World Wrestling Entertainment in order to debut her 'beau' on television- a move that showed that this "reality" television show was as staged as...well, pro wrestling. Plotlines involving two recently broken-up couples being brought together by their respective camera crews seem like a joke in the movie, but they're all too perfect for this movie's place in the whole reality genre.