Harry Sears (Peter Falk) is the manager of attractive tag team wrestlers Molly (Laurene Landon) and Iris (Vicki Frederick) collectively known as The California Dolls. As the trio go around the mid-west taking very middling engagements at best or humiliating engagements at worst, Harry uses his negotiating prowess to try and bring the Dolls to the top.
All the Marbles was the final film of director Robert Aldrich who'd previously directed such films as Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Flight of the Phoenix, and The Dirty Dozen. Aldrich had wanted to make a film about female wrestlers as no one had done one before, and took ideas and concepts from sports dramas such as Rocky and Body and Soul. While the movie was intended to be a film of maximum commercial appeal by both MGM and Aldrich (Aldrich even said as much himself) down to the fact they were planning a sequel to be titled The California Dolls go to Japan before the movie was even released. The movie ended up underperforming with audiences do to be released opposite the World Series playoffs and several football games and coupled with Aldrich's death meant the sequel was never made. All the Marbles on the surface seems like a serviceable enough film, but unfortunately it lacks much narrative drive dramatically, the humor is rather lacking in punch, and the characterizations of its three leads feel very surface level at best.
For the first half of All the Marbles, the movie doesn't have much sense of structure as our three leads go around Ohio from venue to venue with scenes of the Dolls wrestling while Harry argues with promoters about compensation. We never really get to know how or why Molly and Iris fell in with Harry as their manager and there's really not all that much character to our trio. I guess Laurene Landon as Molly is maybe slightly emotionally vulnerable and Vicki Frederick's Iris seems to have some level of sexual/romantic tenson with Harry but we aren't given any deep dives to their characters and while Peter Falk is always an engaging presence he feels like he's recycling his Columbo performance rather than playing a character. While it is impressive Frederick and Landon do their own wrestling stunts, after a while the wrestling scenes don't engage all that much because there's not much character investment and the stakes aren't high enough to care. I guess if you're a fan of women's wrestling you'll find something to like, but the mark of a good sports movie should be audience engagement even if the audience doesn't know or like the sport. Movies like The Harder they Fall or Rocky will engage audiences even if they could care less about boxing, Pride of the Yankees or Angels in the Outfield are great character pieces even if you don't like baseball. All the Marbles on the other hand doesn't have much character or structure so it's not that engaging.
All the Marbles is watchable on its own thanks to the appeal of its three leads, but it falters in comparison to other sports films in spite of the novelty of its women's wrestling focus. If you are a fan of women's wrestling maybe this will satisfy your appetite, but by that measure you could just watch actual women's wrestling and get the same result.
All the Marbles was the final film of director Robert Aldrich who'd previously directed such films as Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Flight of the Phoenix, and The Dirty Dozen. Aldrich had wanted to make a film about female wrestlers as no one had done one before, and took ideas and concepts from sports dramas such as Rocky and Body and Soul. While the movie was intended to be a film of maximum commercial appeal by both MGM and Aldrich (Aldrich even said as much himself) down to the fact they were planning a sequel to be titled The California Dolls go to Japan before the movie was even released. The movie ended up underperforming with audiences do to be released opposite the World Series playoffs and several football games and coupled with Aldrich's death meant the sequel was never made. All the Marbles on the surface seems like a serviceable enough film, but unfortunately it lacks much narrative drive dramatically, the humor is rather lacking in punch, and the characterizations of its three leads feel very surface level at best.
For the first half of All the Marbles, the movie doesn't have much sense of structure as our three leads go around Ohio from venue to venue with scenes of the Dolls wrestling while Harry argues with promoters about compensation. We never really get to know how or why Molly and Iris fell in with Harry as their manager and there's really not all that much character to our trio. I guess Laurene Landon as Molly is maybe slightly emotionally vulnerable and Vicki Frederick's Iris seems to have some level of sexual/romantic tenson with Harry but we aren't given any deep dives to their characters and while Peter Falk is always an engaging presence he feels like he's recycling his Columbo performance rather than playing a character. While it is impressive Frederick and Landon do their own wrestling stunts, after a while the wrestling scenes don't engage all that much because there's not much character investment and the stakes aren't high enough to care. I guess if you're a fan of women's wrestling you'll find something to like, but the mark of a good sports movie should be audience engagement even if the audience doesn't know or like the sport. Movies like The Harder they Fall or Rocky will engage audiences even if they could care less about boxing, Pride of the Yankees or Angels in the Outfield are great character pieces even if you don't like baseball. All the Marbles on the other hand doesn't have much character or structure so it's not that engaging.
All the Marbles is watchable on its own thanks to the appeal of its three leads, but it falters in comparison to other sports films in spite of the novelty of its women's wrestling focus. If you are a fan of women's wrestling maybe this will satisfy your appetite, but by that measure you could just watch actual women's wrestling and get the same result.