Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
11/13/11
Something
Hollywood isn’t always as are of as it should be: in the deepest,
darkest recesses of the ten-year-old mind that never quite leaves a guy
no matter how old he gets, all those monsters, superheroes and robots kicking
around are really only good for one thing: to fight! Oh, yeah,
we might wanna be their friend, learn all about their many powers and backstories
so we can amaze our friends with our knowledge, but all this is just preliminaries
to the main event. Robots, in particular, are made for fighting.
This much Shawn Levy’s new movie Real Steel understands to an uncommon
degree. Using just the barest dusting of Richard Matheson’s 1956
short story Steel (which was once more faithfully filmed as a Twilight
Zone episode), the Night at the Museum
director sets out to combine family drama, a can’t-miss underdog sports
formula and the wonders of Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots into an entertainment
machine for which I’d had very high hopes. Alas, Real Steel
isn’t really pitched at those with an inner ten-year-old, but rather at
ten-year-olds themselves, and lacks much in the way of grit or real emotional
heft. But it does have two excellent adult stars in Hugh Jackman
and Evangeline Lily, and it also has fighting robots to spare. Given
what it could have been, Real Steel is a fairly substantial disappointment,
but if the concept intrigues you, there’s a lot of can’t miss stuff here
that mostly doesn’t. Just know what you’re getting yourself into.
It’s
The Future and human boxing has given way to a new game played by remote-controlled
robots driven by guys like former top contender Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman).
Never knowing when to quit, he’s made one bad bet after another until he’s
without a bot and deeply in debt, most notably to County Fair hustler Ricky
(Kevin Durand), who’s promised him a stern beating the next time they meet.
Fleeing to the safety of his old gym, now run by Bailey Tallet (Evangeline
Lily), the daughter of his mentor, Charlie catches a break: an old
flame has passed away, leaving him the guardian of his biological son Max
(Dakota Goyo). The good news for Charlie is that Max’s wealthy Aunt
Debra (Hope Davis) hopes to adopt him, and he cuts a deal with her husband
Marvin (James Rebhorn) to take the kid for the summer so he won’t get in
the way of their vacation plans and then sign him over. With that
money, he buys yet another new robot and with the kid in tow, it’s back
to the fight game. And just as quickly, it’s back to the scrapyard,
looking for spare parts to build another robot. Max finds and falls
in love with a sparring robot he calls Atom: with Charlie’s boxing
know-how and Max’s showmanship, the little guy proves a surprise hit on
the barnstorming circuit. And soon enough, our heroes are on the
radar of the World Champion, a seemingly indestructible bot called Zeus.
Is there any way tiny little Atom can win the Championship?
Let’s
start with what works: robots fight. Some pretty good robots
to boot, including a two-headed guy called Twin Cities and the impressively
vicious Zeus. Atom is well-designed for underdoghood, and his face
suggests emotion without actually moving. The movie’s robots are
just giant toys, meaning YOU TOO could battle it out in the ring with your
own remote-controlled robot. Of course, the trailer isn’t shy about
letting us know that eventually Charlie will do more than just press buttons
to make Atom go, and while that makes very little logistical sense, it
does pack a real emotional whollop in the exciting final match. Jackman’s
immensely likable even when he’s trying to be a little bit of a jerk, and
the whole boxing underdog formula has pretty much worn a grove in our collective
cinematic brain: it really can’t miss, and it doesn’t miss here.
Former Lost star Lily is really good in her largest movie role to
date, and the chaste sparks between she and the erstwhile Wolverine are
considerable.
If
only, if only, if only… because Real Steel’s target audience is
kids, it’s not exactly overflowing with genuine human emotion. Max
doesn’t seem the list bit maladjusted or even sad about his Mom’s death
(a feeling of “She was awesome, she had her day, let’s move on” hangs over
what little screen time is devoted to the issue: I don’t think they
even call her by name). And because neither Max nor Charlie ever
really feels damaged, their father/son reconciliation never really has
any heft, particularly since the script never does figure out the custody
situation (I mean, seriously, Charlie still loses the kid when the credits
roll, right?). I could just feel the struggle behind the scenes on
the question of whether Atom has a soul: as I mentioned, his face
is designed to seem to have expressions depending on how it’s lit but is
ultimately immobile. Max speaks to it a couple times about how he
knows it’s “different” and has “a secret”, but the movie declines to elaborate
(perhaps the cutting room floor could tell tales), and one can’t help but
wonder if the robot feels, HOW it feels about getting beaten to within
an inch of the junkyard in the climactic bout.
And
it’s just SOOOO 2011 how Atom’s title shot isn’t earned, it’s a gift a
fawning public bestows on a spoiled kid who always gets what he wants.
Down to his haircut, Max is designed to play to an audience in the grips
of Bieber Fever, and there’s an insufferable little bit where he teaches
the robot to dance and joins it in putting on a floor show before the matches
that’s mysteriously supposed to captivate a nation of hardened fight fans
(even the movie grows ashamed of this bit, which gets dropped before the
climactic fight with Zeus). After Atom’s very first officially-sanctioned
win, the kid grabs the microphone and demands a shot at Zeus, and, you
know, since everything he does is so amazingly special, he gets it.
In that sense, Real Steel is very much a movie for the 31% of kids
who believe they’ll be famous someday.
But
a movie like this is designed to be all things to all people, and while
those entitled kiddies are grooving to the ease with which Max becomes
a media sensation, I’m watching Wolverine remote-control a robot into kicking
another robot’s ass. That’s how blockbusters are made. Real
Steel is so far from perfect it kinda hurts, but it’s dealing from
a pretty stacked deck, and I had a good time. You know who you are. |
