Real Steel - Review

This is one of the cheesiest movies I have seen in a long time. My film school brain was going crazy by cringing at every line of super obvious expository dialogue, cliched story tropes, and over the top story moments. However, in a weird way, this movie is actually kind of enjoyable. My eyes were rolling and my face was in my hands for many moments throughout the film, but by the end I was cheering, engaged and I even stood up and pretended to box and shouted, "Go Atom!"

Two analogies that perfectly describe my experience are these. This movie is like a round of shots of tequila. It may sting a little on the way down and cause your body to shiver, but by the end, you're having fun, cheering and even a little bit emotional. Or, this movie is like The Mighty Ducks and Rocky IV put into a blender with extra cheese added. So right off the bat, I will caution viewers not to take this movie seriously and go in expecting to see every movie cliche in the book.

So what's the story? In the future, one of the most popular sports is robot boxing and our main character Charlie (Hugh Jackman) is right in the middle of it. He is a washed-up former boxer living in his mobile home travelling around to various robot boxing matches who seems to constantly be owing people money and living with no responsibility for his actions. Quite frankly, an all around scumbag. After he is granted custody of his son Max (Dakota Goyo) for the summer, Charlie brings Max along his mission to find a robot to put into fights to make some money to pay off all of his debts he has piled up.

From that synopsis, I'm sure that you are able to figure out the rest of the plot. With Charlie being a pretty terrible father and having Max along for the adventure, they are obviously not going to get along at first, but through various struggles and robot matches, they're going to start to bond and... you get the picture. You are not going into this movie to see something new. You have seen this story done thousands of times with every cliched line of dialogue you can think of.

"I know I've been a terrible father and have done many things wrong, but give me this one chance to do something right." Or better yet, "You spend so much time with those robots that even you have become one." That one made me smack my forehead with my hand and yell, "Wow. I can't believe I just heard that."

Seriously, go down the checklist of every thing you'd think you have seen before in an underdog sports movie and it's in here. The girlfriend who is only there for motivational speeches that are good for the trailer, the villains who own the big undefeated robot who spew dialogue along the lines like, "every fighter that faces our robot Zeus, gets destroyed." Did I mention one of the villains has a Russian accent? A kid who doesn't sound like a kid at all. He sounds more like a sports agent trapped inside a little boy's body. And of course, who could forget the final fight at the end of the movie where everything is on the line and we have two announcers who are completely over the top. BINGO! I have sports cliche BINGO!

Like I said earlier, just listing those cliches, I can hear my former screenwriting teacher in the back of my mind yelling, "WHY?!" at the screen. But you know what, this movie is so cheesy that it crosses the line into being enjoyable. I can pinpoint that down for two reasons. One, is that you can tell the filmmakers put in a lot of effort and passion into this movie and two is that the movie goes so over the top that you can do nothing but sit back and laugh and enjoy it.

Hugh Jackman is always good in everything that he is in and gives the movie quite a bit of credibility and I do buy the connection established between him and his son Max. Yes, we have lines like, "Okay Max! What do you want me to do?!" to which the son replies, "I want you to fight for me." littered throughout the script, but you do end up caring enough about these characters to get invested in the story moving forward. Also, I do like the premise of robot boxing matches and having them own the same credibility as something like the UFC. As for the robot battles themselves, they are actually pretty entertaining with some good looking CGI. As for the ending, I won't spoil it (but... c'mon, you know how this story ends) is like the ending of Mighty Ducks and Rocky IV on steriods. It's so cheesy that you just give in and want to clap and cheer for Charlie and Max.

So if you are looking for a movie to take seriously and to challenge you, Real Steel is not the movie for you. However, if a kid with an underdog robot going into a robot boxing match with two evil robot trainers for the big championship sounds fun to you, then you'll have fun with this movie. Again, I can't stress this enough, the levels of cheese in this movie are off the charts. Enter at your own risk.