...All the Marbles (1981)

Good movie but grossly overrated

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

All The Marbles turned out to be Robert Aldrich's last directed film and while it's not the greatest film he ever directed for those who are fans of Peter Falk it's a must. In this one Falk plays the manager of a female tag team champion wrestlers the California Dolls played here by Vicki Frederick and Laurenne Landon. They do a lot of tank town shows and even accept a mud wrestling gig at one point all to get that championship match with the Toledo Tigers. They faced each other twice before and split the outcomes. The finale is a championship match in more ways than one. It's for All The Marbles.Falk really is working on all cylinders with a gamut of emtions that run from basso profundo to coloratura soprano. Just sit back and enjoy.The film also has Burt Young playing a shady promoter and Lenny Montana as his bodyguard. Young truly needs a bodyguard with all the shady stuff he pulls and he got one of the best. Lenny Montana is best known for being Luca Brasi in The Godfather and Young needs his services more than Don Corleone did.In fact you can almost forget that wrestling is an exhibition watching this film. The matches are just like what you see from WWE. Vince McMahon should be proud.

1981 was shortly after Andy Kaufman gave lady's wrestling a slight boost and a few months after john Candy's famous mud wrestling scene in stripes. Lady's wrestling had taken on a bit of a sexy twist and Hollywood tried to capitalize on it a bit with this adventure. Clearly it wasn't intended to just be junk. Peter Falk was a respected actor and the choreography was very well done. The movie, however, isn't without it's flaws.Most people know that wrestling is scripted and these lady's in the "WWE" equivalent would certainly have fought scripted matches not real ones. But if we forgive that, and assume that there's genuine competition, then this movie did a fairly good job of presenting the "grind" of wrestling for a living. Not much reward and lots of bruises.The movie poster implied T&A, but the movie itself was more sport competition than playful fun. The entire film, for example, lacked the sex appeal of the 2 minute mud wrestling scene in stripes, so a person seeing this for the sexy aspect, left disappointed, but it also wasn't really a true "sports" movie either as the outcome was never really in doubt.The movie also failed to give the sense of an underdog rising to challenge a rival, the way Rocky, The Champ or even, made for TV movie Mad Bull or Sylvester Stallone's arm wrestling movie over the top did. The underdog wining in the end may be done to death, but it works. This movie offered pain, but no real tension for the viewer.A final thing it lacked was a personality. You didn't really get to know the ladies at all. They were just wrestlers, not people you were interested in. Peter Falk was OK, he's usually able to come across as a person, but even he was pretty shallow. There was no back story, no "how did he/they get here". Not to compare this to Rocky, cause that's not fair, but when Burgess Meredith talked about not getting his chance and his cheek, bloody, full of holes, you knew everything you needed to know about him and why he was managing. You cared about him. Peter Falk, who was the only character in this film with any personality at all, was still "just some guy".So this movie missed all the marks other than wrestling choreography, which it got down very well. No heart, no story, no personal history, no real underdog, not enough sex appeal, just some well choreographed wrestling scenes that left you saying "ouch" more than "wow".All that said. there are so few lady wrestling movies out there (so few good wrestling movies in general), that this is worth a watch if lady's wrestling is your thing and you want a movie that's basically a lie about how the WWE works, but is told like it isn't.

As a long time wrestling fan, i was very pleased with "All The Marbles" when i saw it in the theaters at the tender age of 13. Even back then, i KNEW wrestling was a show, a put on, a big fix or whatever you want to refer to it as. So to see the actual matches in this film portrayed as legitimate pugilistic contests kind of undermined the whole point of wrestling: to put on a simulated but well choreographed show in which opponents perform moves and holds that realistically can only happen when BOTH participants are cooperating to "sell" the effect. So, in wrestling terminology, this film is done in what is known as "kayfabe" or keeping the illusion up. But apart from that one quibble, everything else regarding pro wrestling was dead on. Long and very boring hours driving from town to town, living out of suitcases, taking all your meals at whatever restaurant you come to, and of course, lots of physical abuse, staged or not, on a nightly basis.Making this about a women's tag team, as opposed to a men's, was obviously a marketing move, with the intention that T&A automatically equals box office. Not quite. "Marbles" bombed at the box office, because unfortunately at the time, pro wrestling wasn't quite the money making juggernaut on TV and at large arenas that it would become just a few years after this film's release. Had it been release in 1985 or later, when the wrestling boom started in earnest, it may have fared better. But who knows? So, we have Peter Falk as a world weary manager for his team, "The California Dolls", also known as Molly, the tall blonde one, and Iris, the short but scrappy brunette. These ladies can wrestle their cute butts off, and they do frequently. What does this odd trio want from this life they are in? To be successful, of course, to reach the top. To do so, the trio must contend with long tours on the road, sleazy promoters, one of the girls trying to kick a painkiller addiction, and of course the stigma that, as Burt Young, ("Paulie" from the "Rocky" movies) says to Falk, "all the crowd wants is t*ts and a$$". Falk takes umbrage at that philosophy, as do the ladies, and so would anyone who loves wrestling for it's action and showmanship, as opposed to simply ogling pretty bodies in the ring.But our trio soldiers on, impressing other influential promoters besides Young, and finding themselves in a championship match at a "Wrestlemania" like event in Reno, Nevada, and right at Christmastime, no less! Laurene Landon and Vicki Frederick, as Molly and Iris, respectively, put on spectacular wrestling performances throughout the film, and even Vince McMahon would be envious to have ladies of such talent and charisma working in his WWE.This is not to say "Marbles" is a perfect film, for it isn't. Besides the "kayfabe" quibble, there's also some embarrassing business regarding a mud wrestling match at a county fair, (yeah, you just knew mud wrestling was going to come into this sooner or later), and there's the soap opera like subplot with Molly trying to kick her painkiller addiction, and a hint that at some point, Iris and Harry (Falk's character) were romantically involved at some point earlier. But all of these negatives don't outweigh the positives: the life of a wrestler is not all glory and glitz and big bucks. It's a very tedious, monotonous and sometimes painful life, lived mostly on the road, with very few days of downtime at home to recharge. And the wrestling business then, and even today, too, is chock full of lowlife sharks who think nothing of making money off the injuries and agonies of the wrestlers who fill their arenas.Clearly, this film was meant for wrestling fans, for only wrestling fans will truly appreciate the physical and mental sacrifices that are made by those who seek fame and fortune in the squared circle. It's not high art, not by a damned sight. And it's a bit less of an emotional rush then what you would get from the first couple of "Rocky" films, but all in all, "All The Marbles" gives you your money's worth of wrestling action, and humanizing the super-heroines who bust their bodies for other people's entertainment.Give it a look, and let the California Dolls dazzle you into submission! Nine stars and a title shot for this film!

This was a fairly interesting movie with a different topic: women's wrestling. It also features a couple of hot-looking ladies (if you can call them that) and has the usually-likable Peter Falk of Columbo TV-fame in the lead.However, this is typical '70s sleaze with lots of profanity and nudity, particularly the latter and mainly to attract a male audience. I like looking at these "babes" as much anyone but, hey, to be honest, films like this made us learn the meaning of the word "gratuitous." The wrestling scenes were decent but the last one went on forever. Actually, it went on for 20 straight minutes which seems like forever in a film. That, and a cast of sleazy characters, made this too unappealing and down for the count.