This is the 10 week anniversary of my movie blog! I have reviewed/analyzed 10 movies so far. If you haven't read all of my posts and would like to, go to the blog archive underneath my movie list on the side of your screen. Thanks for all of you who read!
This has also been the 10th week of computer programming. We just finished working in Scratch, which I must say I have mixed feelings about. Scratch was fun in a way because it was so easy, but I'm not really sure how practical it is. We also just started working in Jeroo, which I am new to so have no informed opinion on the matter. So far I am enjoying the class and look forwards to what we do next.
About a week ago I went to the movies, which is somewhat of a treat for me because I don't get to go that often. I really enjoy the theater experience and wish I could go more often. Anyways, now that I am done with my horror theme, I decided to review the movie that I saw. This week's movie is:
Real Steel, directed by Shawn Levy
In all honesty, there really isn't that much to be said for this movie. Real Steel, while entertaining, was basically made to be a crowd pleaser and not much else. The plot was fairly linear, and told the classic story of an underdog boxer (who in this case is a robot named Atom) who fights his way up to the big leagues. Early on in the story, we also learn that the ex-boxer who trains Atom (Charlie) has a son who's mother recently died. Charlie agrees to take care of the boy for a short time until the boys Aunt and Uncle get back from vacation and take custody of him.
The boy finds an old sparring robot and becomes determined to teach it how to fight, confident that this old machine has the potential for greatness. From this point on it's fairly obvious what is going to happen. The boy coerces his father into teaching the bot (Atom) some basic moves, and ultimately lands the bot a fight. As the fights grow in number, the father and son reluctantly bond as you expected from the start. Atom gathers a large crowd and eventually fights the champion bot, a massive robot name Zeus. This is one of the few parts of the movie that surprised me: Atom looses. After a solid hour and a half of hype building up to this one fight, Atom ties with Zeus in the match, neither dropping out. The win is then decided by Judges, who give Zeus slightly higher score. Even though they won, Charlie and his son treat it like a win. The crowd boos the Judges and Charlie, his son and Atom leave the arena like champions.
As I said before, although this film might be lacking in the cinematic point of view, to be fair that isn't really what it was designed for. Looking at it from the point of view of what it was trying to accomplish (entertain the audience) I thought it was fairly successful. The movie was captivating and has a comforting story line. Its familiar cast (Hugh Jackman and Evangeline Lilly) provided an above par performance and was generally a generic crowd pleaser.
One thing that I did enjoy about this movie was the modesty of the time venue. The film was supposedly based in the near future, and did so believably. The robot boxers, some slightly alien looking cars and futuristic cell phones were really the only alterations made to the world of the characters. I appreciated this lack of flare in contrast to many of the modern movies that go all out on special effects and what-not. I also found the idea of having robot boxers to be especially plausible because robots can give a better fight and literally tear each other to pieces, where humans cannot. Also, people already watch dog fights and chicken fights and things of that sort, so why not robots?
Overall I think I would give this movie a 6.9 on the SMS because it was entertaining, but just that. I think it was good, but far from perfect. I would recommend it to the average movie goer, but if you are offended by anything considered to be a "trash movie", then I would think twice before watching it. This has been a movie review by Severin: the somewhat informed movie critic. Stay safe America, and keep watching movies.
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