Movie review - Real Steel

Last week, we decided to enter the lucky draw that is a *Preview Screening*. For the uninitiated, one buys a ticket and the cinema shows a movie that would be opening in the coming weeks. You're not informed which movie will be screening until lights go down. And this is how I ended up watching Real Steel. My initial reaction upon seeing the trailer for this movie a few weeks ago was that it was incredibly stupid (and not in an enjoyable Transformers way), but I'd heard from several people that it was actually quite good. I believe the words "Rocky with Robots" were used. I beg to differ.



Charlie (Hugh Jackman) is a...well, deadbeat...who was a boxer and is now a robot boxing trainer and not a particularly good one at that. After losing his last robot in a fight against a bull (which I found incredibly cruel and stupid), he discovers that an ex-gf has died and he now has custody of an 11 year old son Max (Dakota Goyo) that he doesn't want but Max is (fortuitously) wanted by his wealthy aunt Debra (Hope Davis),  and negotiates with her much older husband to *sell* Max so long as Charlie takes the boy over the Summer. Max naturally doesn't want to go but changes his mind after meeting Charlie's sorta gf Bailey (Evangeline Lilly). Charlie wastes the money he got on a champion robot which he subsequently destroys by not listening to Max's advice and theyre back at square one...but things change when Max finds a robot thown in the junkyard...  




I'd seen the trailer a few weeks earlier and made the comment, "Wow, that looks like a shit movie," but I'd heard from Dr. Wallace and Officer Fisk that the movie was in fact not bad. No, from the first few minutes, it was bad. I think the scene is about 5 minutes in when three litle girls at the county fair ask if they can see his robot "PLEEEEEEAAAAASE!!!" *high pitched tone* And it just continued from cliched stupidity from there. Of course Charlie coulda been a contender...if they didn't move to robot fighting! Of course father and son will reconcile and bond! Of course the underdog robot becomes the people's champion. Christ, even Charlie's name is a cliche from all the times people sigh, "Oh Chaaarlie...." Give me a break. 


And why are the the people who are the *villians* - the Russian owner of the champion robot, Zeus, and Zeus' Japanese designer - actually the villains? Is it bad that Tak can design such a champion robot and Farra can afford to own him? Surely Charlie is more of a villain for completely neglecting his son for the first 11 years of his life, selling him, and then being so irresponsible as to LOSE the $50,000 immediately? Or how about leaving his son in the middle of the night in a junkyard? Or agreeing to have a ROBOT fight an ANIMAL?

Seriously, I disliked this movie enough that I considered walking out to get home by 1am (the screening started at 11:15) but I decided to stick it through cos I'm Asian and I paid good money. One of my companions had similar thoughts and I turned around at one point and said to him, "Are you sleeping?! If I have to sit and watch this, you have to as well!" 


Maybe I wasn't in the mood but I suspect that if I were to waste the time to watch it again, I'd still hate it. 
1/10


P.S. I just remembered that as I walked out, someone asked if the boy playing Max was the same kid as the one in The Phantom Menace. No he isn't (that kid is like...20+ years old now), but Max was JUST LIKE stupid annoying child Anakin, right down to the haircut. That memory made me take an extra point off the score.