Capone declares that while it may feel familiar, ROBOT JOX, er, TRANSFORMERS, er, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, er, REAL STEEL is great entertainment!!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

The pervading thought that would not leave my head as I watched REAL STEEL is, "Man, this is fun." Other than the robot angle, the script is taken from about a dozen different sports movies. The acting doesn't add much to the mix, but it doesn't hurt the film either. The length of director Shawn (DATE NIGHT; NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM) Levy's latest film is probably about 20 minutes too long. But dammit, if I were a 14-year-old or younger, I would go absolutely bat-shit crazy for this tale of a father and son who piece together a fighting robot to compete in the world championship of robot battles.

The set-up seems routine and unnecessary, but what we get is Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman), a former boxer, who had turned to a life in the near future where robots do in-the-ring fighting instead of humans. There don't seem to be any rules to robot boxing other than the robots have to be about the same size (roughly 8-10 feet). When Charlie's latest competitor is destroyed, he goes on the run after nearly getting killed because of some gambling debts. He's tracked down by a lawyer for his recently dead ex-wife, who informs him that he must now take care of their young son Max (Dakota Goyo). The boy wants nothing to do with Charlie, who abandoned the family when he was a baby, but the pair seem to bond when it comes to robot fighting.

Charlie manages to scrounge together some money to buy a new robot, a former sparring machine, that he transforms into a scrappy little fighter that actually starts winning bouts. When I say that the robot effects are unbelievable, believe it. The human-robot interaction here is unlike anything I've seen before, and I'm including the TRANSFORMERS movies, which were the benchmark in my estimation. Thankfully, the robots in REAL STEEL don't talk. What they can do is mimic behavior, so Charlie teaches the robot some of his old boxing moves, all the while the father and son start bonding, as you'd expect in a film that leaves no cliche unturned.

Subplots involving Charlie essentially selling Max to his wife's sister and dealing with a generic mean dude coming to beat the crap out of Charlie after a welched bet, both could have been left out of the film. The robot opponents provide enough of a villainous presence that human baddies seem unnecessary.

And I'll be damned if those robot fights are really great, both from a visual and sound design perspective. Jackman certainly has the energy and physicality to play a larger-than-life character like Charlie, but with a screenplay like this, it's hard for him not to get trapped by clunky dialogue that gives him only one direction in which to travel. But I'll say it again, REAL STEEL is a lot of fun if you don't concern yourself too much with originality.

This is the classic underdog story crossed with a father-and-son reunion flick featuring all of the things that made those formulas work so well in so many ways. It should come as no surprise that among the movie's executive producers are Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, two guys who perfected certain movie formulas and make billions doing so. I think the biggest surprise about Real Steel for me was that it's based in part on the short story "Steel" by the great Richard Matheson. The matter-of-fact acceptance of robots as part of our sports culture seems to have his stamp on it.

If you aren't too much of a snobby film aficionado to still have genuine fun in the movies, I think you'll find REAL STEEL to be pleasantly entertaining, if not especially challenging to the brain. I don't ever endorse shutting off your brain for the sake of big, dumb fun, but letting it relax a little can be an enjoyable experience.

-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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