Saturday, December 14, 2013

Delayed Reaction: Real Steel

The Pitch: Rock-em Sock-em Robots: The Movie

What Took Me So Long: I refused to watch this on principal until they admitted the Rock-em Sock-em Robots connection/inspiration.

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) My resolve is weak and it was on. I was surprised to see a PG-13 rating on this because it has "family action movie" written all over it. Instead, this is more akin to Small Soldiers in that there was clearly some audience miscalculation at work. This is one of those A and Bs casts where they get one big name (Jackman) and a bunch of "hey, it's that guy from that thing" actors to round it out. The kid was better than I expected given that generally when Hollywood finds a child actor who is worth a damn, they get put in every movie for the next couple years (see Fanning, Dakota and Moretz, Chloe). The robot fighting looked pretty good too and I like Jackman in deadbeat dad mode.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: I can't stress enough how much of a miscalculation there was about the audience. This movie is closer to...Toy Story than the Transformers comparisons I'm sure it wanted. I literally followed this up by watching Warrior because I needed to get the false stakes and generic conflict of a bad boxing/fighting movie out of my system.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

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