Arnie, the former Mister Olympia, has had to retrain in order to play Conan the Barbarian, and so decides to re-enter the Mister Olympia competition just to see if he could win it, meanwhile an up-and-coming bodybuilder in the shape of the bleach blond Tom Platz is looking to make an impression on the competition, can he upset the applecart and derail Arnie's big comeback into the bodybuilding arena?
When I first saw this documentary film it was billed as "Total Rebuild" after the success of "Total Recall" and I had some idea of what I was getting, very much an Arnie self promotion video, but the thing that really makes it a cut above the ordinary bodybuilding features is the study of Tom Platz, who attempts to make out that bodybuilders are clever by reading philosophy, although I suspect that the philosophy that he reads is in fortune cookies. The competition sequence is very interesting and when one watches the posing sequence you can't help but be impressed by Arnie who poses moves poses so quickly with such a great choice of music that it really does hammer away the competition. Even then Arnie had a real sense of spectacle and what makes a great image. Tom Platz by contrast poses like he is constantly tries to amend his pose and make it better, seeming uncertain and unsure of himself, and his dialogue is amazingly bad, the fact that is not scripted and is truly him makes it for an even more interesting spectacle as he reveals himself on the camera and not in a good way.
For me the Tom Platz humorous touches make this a more rewarding view than Pumping Iron which tends to make Arnie out to be a scumbag and doesn't focus on his better qualities, which he does have. A great guilty pleasure for both the eyes and ears