Dumbbells

The less said, the better about an excruciatingly unfunny T&A comedy called "Dumbbells," about Chris (Brian Drolet), a former college basketball jock whose NBA dreams ended with a knee injury.


Now, he's a trainer at a strip-mall SoCal gym, where we never see him train anyone, just curse and pout about his crummy job and crummier existence. The plot has something to do with a television celebrity buying the gym, renaming it Dumbbells 25/8 ("because 24/7 is for pussies"), and using it as the setting for a reality show. The list of celebrity cameos reads like a Hollywood Squares board from hell: Tom Arnold, Jaleel White, even Fabio. If you're going to make a movie about a guy named Chris Long, make it the brilliant film critic for Movie Metropolis (and my onetime Haverford roommate). 

I was the only person in attendance through the first half of the movie, and walked out just as another man walked in. The theater operator asked whether I wanted a refund and told me the man was the director of "Dumbbells," Christopher Livingston. Sad - especially so since the theater is the beautiful and newly back-in-operation Majestic Crest Westwood. If you've never been to the Crest - a city-protected historic-cultural monument of Art Deco design, with gorgeous blacklight images of 30s-era Hollywood haunts - you owe it to yourself. Just wait for something - anything - better than "Dumbbells."