By Jacob Cameron

The Heartbreak Kid: Becoming Shawn Michaels is a documentary streaming on Peacock about pro wrestling legend Shawn Michaels. The documentary offers a beginners guide is Michaels’ career, both the highs and the lows. And while it’s not revealing anything new for fans with intimate knowledge, it operates as a great first impression.

The documentary parallels footage of Michaels working with aspiring pro wrestlers at WWE’s Performance Center while showing footage of him in his prime. Capturing that Michaels had an incredible wellspring of talent gleaned from years of experience. Almost curtailing that hard work was a poor attitude, the pressures of being the top superstar in a down period for the then WWF, and drug addiction.

The big positive is the fact that the documentary managed to get a lot of the interesting aspects of Michael’s career into a short amount of time. The documentary is about  90 minutes long and the runtime flies by. Additionally, it is nice seeing Michaels work with the aspiring wrestlers. There is a great deal of admiration communicated from these wrestlers in the talking head interviews. Joe Hendry and Trick Williams were especially complimentary in their interviews.

As mentioned, this is about a 90 minute documentary into the life and career of someone who grappled with quite a lot of adversity. Some brought on by others, but most by himself due to his vices. This documentary may leave some hardcore fans wanting a more deep dive into incidents such as the “Lost My Smile” incident or the Montreal Screwjob. This touches on those incidents briefly and shows that Michaels has made peace with them. But nothing more than that.

It has shown that Michaels has taken these rougher times in stride and has actively changed his life for the better. Which has, in turn, earned him respect from colleagues and peers. Respect that wasn’t always given; Mark “The Undertaker” Calaway has the quote of the documentary regarding his thoughts on Michaels in the 90s. But it’s mostly surface level. An additional half hour to an hour could have added quite a bit of context to why some of the events that Michaels was at the center of could have been interesting.

Importantly, Michaels is introspective and honest about the mistakes that he made and tried to fix them as much as he could. His recovery is shown as one of triumph. From having a broken back and addicted to drugs to a triumphant return in 2002 and an additional 8 years to his career. Which was then parlayed into his current career and an addiction to dum dum lollipops.

Ultimately, this is a well put together documentary and, for those not familiar with Shawn Michaels, this will prove to be enlightening. Fans that are more in the know will probably find this documentary to be disappointing. Or otherwise missing something. But this documentary functions as an introduction and it largely succeeds.

3 stars