Bill Clinton and James Dale walk into a bar....

Why did this movie mix "real" people with "imaginary" people? It was surreal.

We have Diamond Dallas Page, Goldberg, Sting, and many other actual wrestlers. And then, right alongside them, we have - without any irony whatsoever - Oliver Platt as a "wrestler" the scriptwriters just made up. We also have "Titus Sinclair" instead of Eric Bischoff, as well as Rose McGowan as a Nitro Girl who never actually existed.

It's all so jarring that I can't help but speculate. Since David Arquette actually became a WCW performer for a time because of this movie, I have to wonder if Platt, too, was training for a possible life in the ring, and if "Jimmy King" was supposed to join the WCW roster if not for some trick of fate. As incredible as it sounds, to me it would be the only possible way this movie would make sense.

Actually, a great many Hollywood movies - especially during my own lifetime - have suffered from this discrepancy. How many flicks have we all seen where the story is supposed to be completely made up, but someone like Jay Leno or (okay, so he's just a guy in a costume, but still real) Ronald McDonald shows up for no reason and the characters implicitly know who this person is? (The site TV Tropes.org even has a page dedicated to this phenomenon, dubbed "The Celebrity Paradox.")

READY TO RUMBLE was entertaining and funny, sure - but it would have been much less confusing if, say, the wrestlers had played "fictional characters" (as if wrestling itself wasn't fictional, natch) instead of themselves.

(The title of this thread, by the way, refers to the fictional President of the United States in MARS ATTACKS!)