Film Review: Real Steel
Yes, yes I know, It's 'Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots: The Movie' but you know what? That's okay.
I was itching to see this movie since I saw the trailers, but I honestly expected it to be a lot more cornball than it actually was. The majority of the film was about the relationship between Charlie Kenton (played by Hugh Jackman, who with this film has confirmed my suspicions that he may be the most underrated actor of his generation) and his estranged son Max. The robots punching each other was just a convenient maguffin.
Not to say that the scenes with the robots punching each other weren't excellent. They totally were! The fight choreographers could have been lazy and have each robot move the same (They ARE robots, after all) but they weren't: Each 'bot in the film (almost a dozen) moved and fought differently thanks in part to the films boxing consultant, none other than the legendary Sugar Ray Leonard. Unlike a lot of other Mocap/CGI entities you see on the screen, these robots looked and 'felt' real on the screen.
Was it perfect? No. The kid had a bad case of 'grown up in an 11 year old body' disease that a lot of these movies have, and the villains of the piece (the owners of Zeus, the Robot Boxing champ) were so two-dimensional you could turn them sideways and hide them behind a pencil. But the relationship between Jackman's character, his son, and his on-again/off-again girlfriend are surprisingly warm and beleivable, even in this ridiculous world of half-ton robots beating the crap out of each other in abandoned zoos.
I give it a high Matinee: Worth seeing on the big screen, but not worth whatever passes for full price these days...
I was itching to see this movie since I saw the trailers, but I honestly expected it to be a lot more cornball than it actually was. The majority of the film was about the relationship between Charlie Kenton (played by Hugh Jackman, who with this film has confirmed my suspicions that he may be the most underrated actor of his generation) and his estranged son Max. The robots punching each other was just a convenient maguffin.
Not to say that the scenes with the robots punching each other weren't excellent. They totally were! The fight choreographers could have been lazy and have each robot move the same (They ARE robots, after all) but they weren't: Each 'bot in the film (almost a dozen) moved and fought differently thanks in part to the films boxing consultant, none other than the legendary Sugar Ray Leonard. Unlike a lot of other Mocap/CGI entities you see on the screen, these robots looked and 'felt' real on the screen.
Was it perfect? No. The kid had a bad case of 'grown up in an 11 year old body' disease that a lot of these movies have, and the villains of the piece (the owners of Zeus, the Robot Boxing champ) were so two-dimensional you could turn them sideways and hide them behind a pencil. But the relationship between Jackman's character, his son, and his on-again/off-again girlfriend are surprisingly warm and beleivable, even in this ridiculous world of half-ton robots beating the crap out of each other in abandoned zoos.
I give it a high Matinee: Worth seeing on the big screen, but not worth whatever passes for full price these days...