Real Steel is a reel steal [MOVIE REVIEW]
“Real Steel,” Disney’s sanitized answer to Rocky starring Hugh Jackman and Atom the animatronic robot is a 13-year-old’s fantasy. In a world of the not too distant future, extreme boxing has been taken over by robots and their human trainers. Charlie, the almost-ran former boxer and now loser on the margins, played by Hugh Jackman with a two-day beard growth to signify how far he’s fallen, dreams of that big score with a robot boxer. Always broke, always “this close” to winning, always nothing, Charlie is a love-em-and-leave-em type guy who needs a stash to parlay his dreams into reality. That stash comes in the shape of the 11-year-old son, Max, who he hasn’t seen since birth. Max’s mom has died and his Aunt Debra wants to adopt him but can’t until Charlie releases his paternal claim. Seeing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, Charlie hits up Debra’s husband Marvin for cold cash to release the rights to Max. Marvin is willing to do so, provided the arrangement is kept secret and Charlie babysits the kid for two months while he and Debra take a long planned trip to Tuscany.
If you don’t see what’s coming next, and what comes after that and after that, then you have either not seen a movie, a TV show, or read a book in your lifetime (I’d say millennium, but I keep forgetting how short a time that is).
It is unlikely that better acting would have rescued this film from mediocrity; that such drivel will also keep this from being a hit is also unlikely as the robot fight sequences are thrilling. Not versed in “transformer”-type movies, I marveled at the execution and the beauty of the machines. In more skilled hands, the humor of adults playing what amounts to giant video games would have been more evident.
The multiple “filmic references” (“Rocky,” “Mad Max,” “The Champ,” “ET” and “Short Circuit”), and I would have to view the film again in order to catch more of them (that’s not going to happen), were cobbled together to create the story. How much more fun if they had been send-ups instead of plot points.
But even if the film is a wash-out at the box office, Disney (partnered with Dreamworks) made sure to mitigate their outlay with toys and corporate sponsorships, now and forever after known as product placement. Like that old familiar car trip game of “I Spy,” visual and scripted references were made for Dr. Pepper, Bing, Sprint, Virgin Atlantic, Budweiser, Cadillac, ESPN, Mercedes and Capitol One (I probably missed some of them because I was there to see the film not count the commercials).
Hugh Jackman is a very handsome man, and it is possible that playing it straight with a kid and a robot would be too much for anyone. Evangeline Lilly as Bailey, Charlie’s lover, has little to do besides uttering platitudes; Anthony Mackie, good even in this, is wasted as a “boxing” promoter; Kevin Durand plays a villain missing only the black hat and mustache (I take that back, he has the black hat); and Dakota Goyo, in that long tradition of scene-stealing children, is Max, the smart-ass kid seeking the attention of his long missing father. Most enjoyable, though, was watching the great theater actors Hope Davis and James Rebhorn, Max’s aunt and uncle, try to fit into the scenario with their “what the hell am I doing here” expressions.
So parents, your young teenage boys will probably enjoy this movie; as for you, take a page from Davis and Rebhorn and realize that setting foot inside the theater will yield your own “what the hell am I doing here” moment.