Detailed DVD Review: “Woodshop,” Starring Jesse Ventura

Steven Wilson from MainEventRadio.com sent along the following …

DVD Review : “Woodshop” starring Jesse The Body Ventura

Reviewed by Steven Wilson of MainEventRadio.com

Jesse Ventura has had quite the adventurous life. In the early 70’s he was a Navy Seal, In The Mid 70’s and over the 2 decades that would follow, he would make a name for himself in the world of professional wrestling as ”The Body”. It’s without a doubt that his time in pro wrestling opened up many avenues for him, one obviously being the political route which saw him serve as a mayor and later governor in Minnesota, but like many wrestlers before and after him, it opened up doors in the acting world. Over the years Ventura has had roles in Predator, Zorro, and Demolition Man, but now in 2010 he is featured in a much smaller scale film entitled “ Woodshop” which is now available on DVD from 42 Productions.

This independent production is a teenage “dramedy” set in a high school woodshop class. The film plays out over a single Saturday at the high school shop class where class valedictorian Chris Johnson is sent to serve out a detention for having accidently concocted a mini rocket in chemistry class. Little did Chris expect to have to face quite the number of obstacles to survive the day. Amongst his fellow Woodshopers are all your typical high school characters, the best friend, the bully, the tomboy, and the stoner with a hidden genius.

Ventura plays the role of Mr. Madson, an ex army ranger who now teaches woodshop at the local high school. Longtime fans of Jesse will be reminded of his days as The Body as his character is reminiscent of his days in the wrestling world. To be honest, Ventura is the bright spot of this film, his performance is quite enjoyable.

It’s no major spoiler to say that the premise of the film is dealing with a high school bully. Director Pete Coggan deserves credit for doing a decent job of capturing the teenage character type of this day and age, although its done in a slightly cheesy and typical type of way in that the characters traits are spot on but the play out of the story is slightly off, but then again this is the movie world so I guess you have to expect such a thing.

With a low budget film comes the potential for some low quality production, In the case of Woodshop, the audio quality is what suffers. Eventhough the majority of the film is set in what is a fairly empty school, and fairly empty shop class, where in real life the audio would come off the way it does, echoy and hard to understand, this however is a film, and unfortunately its sometimes hard to understand what the characters are saying due to the poor audio quality. I sometimes had to refer to the subtitles to make sure who said what. Meanwhile I found the video quality to be more than acceptable as in this day and age with high quality cameras coming down in price its hard not to get some decent looking footage.

The IMDB page for Woodshop lists the Tag Line as “It’s easy to convince yourself that life is a collection of unhappy memories where no good deed goes unpunished… It’s not” And although that tag line is no where to be see on the DVD cover, it is the basic message this film tries to get across. If you’re a big Jesse Ventura fan, or for that matter a fan of independent film, Woodshop is worth a look, Im not sure that many indy films hit the rental shelves anymore, but if this does I’d call this a Rent It.

Woodshop is now available on DVD from 42 Productions, You can pick up your own copy at local retailers or via online retailers such as Amazon. For more information check out www.woodshopmovie.com , and to read my previous DVD Reviews check out http://www.wrestlingdvdreviews.vze.com