Enduring 15 rounds of fighting Mike Tyson in his prime with your hands tied behind your back may be more pleasant than watching "Real Steel."
This movie just proves that Hollywood has lost all respect for the viewing public and is determined to release the most idiotic film premises possible. Director Shawn Levy, of the "Night at the Museum" franchise, typically directs family-friendly films with excessive amount of CGI and some sparse wooden acting.
"Real Steel" is no different. With its gratuitous slow-motion shots of robots fighting, it seems that Levy has created the perfect movie for boys ages four to nine, a clear indicator of the film's quality.
"Real Steel" is set in the not-so distant future (2020 to be exact), where robots have replaced humans in the sport of boxing and for some reason people still care about boxing, meaning that it must be an alternate reality. Hugh Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, a down-on-his-luck ex-boxer (is there any other type of boxers in movies?) who owes literally everyone in the film money. In order to pay off his debts, he goes around putting his robo-boxer in fights and betting on himself then immediately losing.
After losing a particularly bad fight to a bull at what seems to be a futuristic state fair, Charlie is alerted that his estranged wife has passed and he must straighten out the custody issues with his 11-year-old son Max. He makes a deal for a $100,000 for Max with his rich uncle, in which he takes care of the kid while they are away in Italy and will give custody back when they return. After this little transaction is made, Charlie takes Max on the road with him to fight his new bot that he bought with Max's slave revenue.
After getting brutalized in an underground fight, Charlie and Max go into a junkyard looking for spare parts to salvage their bot, where they find Atom, a "Generation 2 sparring bot," which can be loosely translated into underdog robo-boxer. Atom is not like other bots; he's special in that he can take a harder beating than other bots. He also can teach Charlie and Max the importance of family and every other sappy life lesson "Real Steel" tried to cram in there.
To make a long story short (trust me, "Real Steel" is a very long story), Max and Charlie take Atom on the road, he succeeds enough to generate buzz and get a shot at the title with a murder machine named Zeus and now "Rocky" has been remade with robots.
"Real Steel" does everything wrong; if it can be screwed up, "Real Steel" managed to do it. However, the worst aspect of the film is the dialogue. The audience was treated to such gems as "done done it" and "serving up a de-cappuccino" (this happened when one robot viciously tore off another robot's head — real family-friendly there, Levy) just proving that Shakespeare is somehow still alive and writing Hugh Jackman movies.
If the dialogue does not grate at the most inward parts of your soul, then watching robots get dizzy and stumble like real boxers reacting to pain around during fights probably should. Not only that, but in one fight, a robot (which is a mechanical object, mind you) got tired.
Everything in this movie is just so easy to hate. Though the lowest point in the film (possibly in any film) is when Max teaches the robot to dance. During this impromptu lesson, Max is doing all these weird dances moves I have never seen and suddenly Max starts do the "robot" and — you guessed it — the robot does the "robot," which sums up this pile of "scrap" more perfectly than I ever could.