WWF documentary is OK for older teens.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 14, 2010

Documentaries are almost always more interesting if the filmmakers fess up about their relationship to the subject, as unabashed pro-wrestling fan Barry Blaustein does in this naively made, compelling homage to the sport.

| Mar 23, 2007

A gently and genuinely observed film whose subject is a garish, artificial display of mayhem.

Full Review | Mar 23, 2007

We tour the All-Pro Wrestling School in California and Philadelphia's fearsome Extreme Championships, but it's the studies Blaustein makes of several wrestlers that root the film.

| Jun 24, 2006

Unfortunately Blaustein isn't an experienced enough film-maker to make much of such material.

| Dec 3, 2002

Entertaining and twisted.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 19, 2002

A center ring extravaganza of smackdown movie entertainment.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Friendly, soft-hitting documentary.

| Original Score: B- | Jan 1, 2000

Beyond the Mat is crazily entertaining.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Funny and touching documentary.

| Jan 1, 2000

This is the best documentary since Hoop Dreams

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Blaustein suggests wrestling's appeal -- as a kind of primal spectacle closer to parades and pageants than any accepted form of sport -- without wondering at all why he finds it compelling.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

So tired and dated.

| Jan 1, 2000

The wrestlers are cannier than Blaustein probably gives them credit for; they seem to be offering up their backstage lives to him in ways that mimic the soppiest of melodramas, and he falls for it.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Beyond the Mat wants to blend thrills and pathos, getting at the many sides of what is, as Mr. Blau stein describes it, a carny act. The problem is that he doesn't articulate any of his own thoughts beyond a few slight asides.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Beyond the Mat takes all the fun out of the insanity that is wrestling.

| Jan 1, 2000

It has a hypnotic quality.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 1, 2000

It centres on the distinctive, disturbing, weird, unnerving universe that is American wrestling which primarily presents legitimised violence as entertainment.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 1, 2000

An unexpected little gem.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Beyond the Mat transcends its subject, pro wrestling, to become a wrenching, sobering, emotional glimpse at the lives of some men trapped by the aging process.

| Jan 1, 2000