Movie Review Real Steel

Movie Reviews
Real Steal (2011)

I am imagining I am an impressionable nine year old boy- This movie is cool!
I totally want to spaz out right now, and tell everyone to watch Real Steel!. I am getting all giddy, like when my parents first took me to see “Angels in the Outfield” or “The Mighty Ducks.” I am easily amused, impressed and entertained. I will probably watch it a dozen more times, and learn all the quotable dialog. Just from watching this movie my imagination has been so insanely stimulated. I am a nine year old boy, playing in the backyard, pretending I have my very own robot.

Those grown-ups film critics don’t know anything about movies. They just sit around smoking their hypothetical scholarly pipes pretending to be educated in motion picture arts, amusing only their own egos.
“mmmyes, but this film lacked story continuity”
“pish posh!, its major failing was the lack of likeable character”
“mmmyes quite”

Pipe smoking. Pipe smoking.

Okay, I will admit for my educated mind, Real Steel is a little bit ill- conceived. Lets be honest giving it “too” much praise would be almost as embarrassing as giving Transformers an academy award for anything other then visual effects. However I don’t want to glaze over how enchanted I was by this film- and trust me I’d viewed it stubbornly, doubting it contained any ounce of cinematic substance.

A quick overview, it is year 2020 and robot boxing is all the rave! Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is a former boxer- back in the olden days when “humans” used to box for sport. He is strugglingwith his new career in mechanical robot boxing. He fights his robots in underground back alley fights to earn money to sustain himself, apparently resenting the entire lifestyle, and dreaming of the glory days where his boxing talents where a legitimate skill.
Charlie is suppose to be a difficult to like character, but Jackman is pleasant enough, that the audience does mind his “rough” nearly villain exterior. Immediately you assume there is some good in Charlie that just needs to be persuaded to come out… Enter, estranged son Max.

(*** kids in these sorts of movies are frequently named Max, interesting I have actually never met a child with “that” name. Ironically, I’ve met a lot of dogs named Max.)

Max is sort of bartered into having to spend the summer with his malevolent father. Like father like son, sweet faced Max turns out to be a little bit of a bad ass- so the two of them make an ideal pair.

I actually enjoyed the way the relationship between father and son is examined in this movie. The character of Max is a well mirrored result of his father, and even though they are seemingly meeting for the first time. The screenplay does a lot to demonstrate their similarities.

Anyhow, the father and his son end up finding a sparing robot in the trash, that Max takes a relentless liking too. Note: The Robot Atom, is the most endearing character in the film, he pretty much deserves his own spin off. I liked him better then Wall.E or The Iron Giant.- The plot goes on rather predictably from there and is for most part spoiled in the trailer. See Below.

“Real Steel” is the kind of movie that nobody is immune to liking. Sure the most pretentious of us would probably adore ripping it apart analytically and giving it a big fat old judgement parade.

The lesson to be taught by this movie however is that there is still entertainment in a well composed family fluff film. It is a flashback to a genre that used to amuse us in our days of playing with action figures in the playground.

There actually has not been a commendable film of this nature in awhile. I find that movies are either too adult oriented even though their true target audience is essentially children, recall again Transformers or any super hero movie put out in the last decade. If i had kids of my own I would actually be irritated by the gaping hole between what is suitable for children and what makes a box office success these days. Realistically, Real Steel is the best we are gonna get for awhile- and I think it gets a nice family movie night stamp of approval, but not in a intellectually deteriorating sort of way.

Reviewed By
Brandie Tschauner