We love fighting; we love Transformers. I suppose it was just a natural progression to combine the two.
Real Steel is a film in which a near future society seems to have replaced boxing with robot-boxing. OK. Fine. Hugh Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, an ex-pro who gave up boxing after being knocked out for the 19th time. Like most mediocre ex-fighters, Charlie is also an advanced robotics engineer and thus feeds his gambling addiction by prowling the countryside for more robot fights to promote and lose. In the first twenty minutes, Charlie 1) tries to scalp money from a set of pre-teen girls 2) lies ugly to a set of creditors 3) whines about a bout 4) makes an awful bet 5) loses a fight for not paying attention 6) punches an innocent guy 7) cons the husband of his sister-in-law and 8) sells his only child to the same. What a charmer. Took 40 minutes for Real Steel to find something, anything, even mildly endearing about Charlie. Took over an hour of screen-time for the next moment.
As with movies like this, Charlie -of course- gets stuck with his 11-year-old estranged child, Justin Bieber wannabe Max (Dakota Goyo, best.name.ever). And Max -of course- knows nothing about how to box, but knows everything else including robotics and boxing history and thus makes much better decisions than Charlie. Real Steel acknowledges this point when convenient. It is Max, not Charlie, who discovers Atom, the machine that will allow the pair to ride the fight circuit. Aw, the little boy taught the robot how to love … and beat the WD-40 snot out of other robots. Isn’t that sweet?
Steel constantly switches between “real movie” and “popcorn movie.” Catch the scene where Charlie meets Max essentially for the first time. It’s on a deserted sidewalk in front of what appears to be a closed firehouse. Jackman freezes. The kid freezes. A long shot shows both on 
screen thirty feet apart. The shot is beautiful and says everything the scene needs to say: at this point Charlie and Max are so distant emotionally they can’t even be grouped geographically … and in the next scene we introduce a nine foot blue automaton that can only move when Max speaks Japanese to it. Why does Max know Japanese? “Bootleg video games.” Of course. The plot that asks a deadbeat dad to bond with his child is certainly one from the real movie spectrum. The plot which requires a nifty Kid n’ Play pre-fight dance routine with the robot? Less. Real movie or faux movie? You decide.
It took a while to get there, but eventually we get payoff: Real Steel has the most laughable climax of the year. Get the right friends together and this is side-splitting, tear-inducing stuff. I won’t give it away; I’ll just say, “what if Rocky were a puppet?” Real Steel is filmed in all earnestness which makes the conclusion that much funnier. And aside from Jackman, the acting is pretty awful in the round. This, again, only adds to the ludicrous nature of an ending taking itself way-too-seriously.
As with any new cinematic sport (Quidditch, Rollerball, etc.), I’m fascinated by the accepted, but never voiced, rules. Why not just build a bigger robot? Or a stronger one? I’ve seen “Robot Wars.” The one that wins is always blocky with a low-center of gravity. Do they have to be humanoid? How humanoid? The bi-pedal thing is actually not entirely useful for the intended use, design-wise. Why not build something more efficient? I may as well be asking, “why not make a better movie?”
Rated PG-13, 127 Minutes
D: Shawn Levy
W: John Gatins, Dan Gilroy and Jeremy Leven
Genre: Boxing, ver. 2.0
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot handicappers
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: People who take child-rearing seriously
Jackman’s Charlie is the most deplorable lead character I’ve seen in a movie in years. He deserved every bad thing that came his way. Evangaline Lilly was miscast as his girlfriend. The only suitable mate for Charlie would be Kristen Wiig’s equally wretched character from Bridesmaids.