Produced by Paramount Animation, WWE Studios, Walden Media and Reel FX Animation Studios, the film was released in the United States on December 15, 2021 on Paramount+.[1] The film received mixed reviews from critics with criticism for its writing, characters, and pacing, although the animation and voice acting received some praise.
Plot
In a world where giant monsters and humans coexist, monsters compete in a popular professional wrestling global sport known as monster wrestling, with each city having its own monster wrestler. After the current wrestler for the small town of Stoker, the shark-like Tentacular, becomes the new world champion, he announces he no longer wants to represent Stoker. The townspeople are later told if they do not find a new wrestler, they will lose the town's stadium and its revenue, which prompts wrestling enthusiast Winnie Coyle to search for a new monster representative for her town.
Winnie heads to an underground fight and finds Rayburn Jr., the son of the famous late Stoker champion Rayburn Sr., fighting under the name of "Steve The Stupendous". Winnie interferes in the match and causes Steve to win instead of taking a dive, as the underground arena employer Lady Mayhen wanted. Steve is confronted by Lady Mayhen and threatened unless he can get her back the money she just lost. Winnie tells Steve she can help him get the money by training him to fight Tentacular. Realizing he has no other way to make the money, Steve agrees to be trained.
Steve initially is uninterested in learning how to fight properly and wins his first match by evading his opponent. Steve later tells Winnie he left Stoker because everyone saw him as an extension of his father and could not live up to his name. Winnie learns Steve loves dancing and decides to train him using dance moves. As they progress up the league's rankings, Tentacular announces he and his agent have bought Stoker's stadium and wants to demolish it as Tentacular sees it as a reminder that he will be always compared to Rayburn. Even though Steve repays Lady Mayhen, he decides to help Winnie, reveals his identity as Rayburn's son and challenges Tentacular to a match for the stadium.
During the fight, Steve avoids most of the hits by Tentacular in the first round, but Tentacular counters his dance moves in the second round. After convincing Winnie not to give up, Steve, in the third round, lands several hits with his dance moves. Winnie tells Steve to use Tentacular's suckers to stick him to one of the corner posts. When Steve goes in for the final move, he and Tentacular collide and are both knocked out. Tentacular gets up first but is too rattled to end the match. The crowd gets Steve back up by clapping a salsa beat and he is able to defeat Tentacular, becoming the new monster wrestling champion and saving the stadium.
On September 19, 2019, the film was scheduled to be released on July 31, 2020.[6] On November 12, 2019, the release date was pushed to January 29, 2021.[7] On October 27, 2020, the release date was then moved to May 14, 2021,[8] and moved again on January 27, 2021 to February 18, 2022 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.[9] On November 26, 2021, the film made one final move to December 15, 2021, as a Paramount+ exclusive, cancelling its theatrical release altogether.[1]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 44% based on reviews from 16 critics, with an average rating of 5.20/10.[10] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 48 out of 100 based on reviews from 5 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[11]
