Beyond the Ring

Andre is a retired MMA fighter who’s left the ring behind for a life of domestic tranquility and staring at trashcans. That second one sounds like a joke, but it is very much the dramatic linchpin of the movie, and the reveal of why this is so may cause you to pause the movie and take a long walk to Think About Some Things.

Andre’s manager is a sentient “How To Win Big At Casino Slots” VHS tape, played by Gary Busey. He’s managed to get Andre on the cover of several magazines with “Kicking” in the title: Kicking & Stretching, Combat Kicking, Kicking Fancy, Modern Kicking Bride, Barely Legal Kicking. Andre is angling to be the Mr. July centerfold in “Trashcan Gazer” magazine, but these plans are upended when his adorable daughter collapses and, in the role every young actress dreams of, spends the rest of the movie unconscious in a hospital bed

Turns out the girl needs life saving brain surgery. Several other characters in this movie likely do as well, but we’ll only focus on the girl. Gary finds Andre a fight that can potentially cover the surgery cost, but it’s against a fearsome fighter in a secret illegal location (this is a RiffTrax movie, so it is an industrial warehouse). A fight this intense will require an unprecedented number of montages, which is good, because every minute spent montage-ing is a minute where Andre isn’t trying to complete a successful line read.

Evil sensei Martin Kove is on hand to supervise all leg sweeping, and there’s some truly unique training routines involving chaining yourself to a Hummer. Join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for a movie featuring a main character who would have gotten thrown out of Dragon Sound for getting his ass kicked by The Ninja, Beyond The Ring.

 Written by: Mike Nelson, Conor Lastowka, Sean Thomason, Jason Miller, and Zachary Shatzer