Sunday, October 9, 2011

Real Steel- review


You're gonna eat lightening and you're gonna crap thunder.
I’ll give this movie some credit- at least the robots look cool.  The mix of animatronics with motion capture really made the brawls look crisp and real; not just pixilated blobs fighting like a videogame cut scene. This movie falls into the same pitfall as the “Transformers” movie where the human element is unwanted. In this case, it’s because character is unlikable.

They knocked his block off!
Former boxer Charlie, played by Hugh Jackman, is a loser in the sport of robot fighting.  He gains custody of his son, Max, who is played by Dakota Goyo, and is almost a clone of young Jake Llyod.  The two come across a sparring robot and Max gets it working. Through this, they both develop a relationship on the road as their robot begins winning. 

Remember kid.  Women weaken knees.
The characters are despicable people.  All but one are incredibly greedy and selfish individuals who really could care less about the others.  How are you supposed to buy into the human drama element when you don’t care?  It’s clear that the Charlie character shouldn’t have a kid.  Let’s not pretend that Charlie all of a sudden develops love for the brat, when the only reason he even has him around is that Max’s success is winning him money.

Why? Why was I programmed to feel pain?
As if that wasn’t the largest disappointment to this movie, the robot Atom’s fight to the top is one of the most blatant rip-offs of “Rocky” I have ever seen.  It’s almost painful to watch because it stole the entire ending fight and copied it like a Xerox machine.  I kept expecting the robot to look to the crowd for his girlfriend who works in the pet shop.

I can’t recommend this movie, even to rent. Just watch “Rocky” and you’ll get something a lot better and you’ll like the protagonist a lot more than “Real Steel.” They used to televise robot fights on Comedy Central.  It was called “Battlebots” and they were basically boxes whacking one another.  “BattleBots” was more entertaining than this, and it was cancelled.

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