Again, not a rant, but it was on 24/7 this month as a part of the Manager Mayhem thing so I thought I’d give it a look. Doesn’t really lend itself to recapping, but I had some thoughts.
– Overall, the thing that struck me most was that it was two things that WWE documentary pieces rarely are: Gentle and classy. Everyone was on their best behavior and no one made any attempts to gleefully bury anyone like on a lot of other releases. Even in the case of easy lay-ups like Sunny and Sable and Chyna, they went out of their way to only mention the positives and not tack on the tawdry end of their careers. That’s a really nice change from hatchet pieces like the Warrior DVD and shows that maybe owning everything can be a good thing.
– I liked the mixture of focus, not only on the WWF creations of the 70s and 80s, but on guys like Paul Heyman and Jim Cornette, who never really had any kind of legendary managing career in the WWE proper. And again, now that they own everything, it’s OK for guys to admit that Paul E Dangerously was a brilliant character or that Jim Cornette might have drawn money with his promos.
– I thought that they handled Miss Elizabeth’s little bit very well, again just stressing the WWE career and ignoring the sad and rather pathetic end of it.
I think it was just nice to have a straight nostaglia piece without politics or an agenda behind it, so we, as fans, could remember stuff we enjoyed watching and even got a bit of insider lingo from Vince himself at times as a bonus. Even little things that John Cena quipping that anyone with a doctorate (pause) in style was cool with him were nice touches. It wasn’t a particularly deep or insightful 90 minutes, but it was fun, and sometimes that’s enough. Recommended.
