REAL STEEL

March 12, 2012 (DVD)

Real Steel is one of those movies that I intended to see in theaters and tried several times to get there but just never quite made it. And after that, time just kept moving and I prioritized other titles over it. But finally, earlier this month, I remembered how much I wanted to see it and made it happen. There’s not a single thing about the premise of the film that would discourage me: rock’em sock’em robots, father-son relationship story, plus Hugh Jackman with just a bit of an edge. How could it go wrong?

It just so happened that Dyl Pickle was spending a Spring Break night with me before I had to return Real Steel to the DVD kiosk, and I was thrilled to learn that it would be mostly appropriate for him to watch with me. I thought he’d love the robots and the bot-boxing, and I hoped that the slower moments of drama would be short so that D didn’t get bored. So we watched this movie together. D was into it pretty well at first, but around the midway point he started getting bored enough to want to do some “art.” I made up for his lesser enthusiasm by bouncing in my seat a lot and punching the air along with the bots. D had to repeatedly tell me that it was “just a movie” and that I shouldn’t be imitating what was happening on screen. Ha! He’ll learn, as we see more grown-up films together, that I’m very interactive in my movie-watching! With Real Steel, I was totally lost in the rock’em sock’em!

Hugh Jackman is terrific as a deadbeat dad forced to find a relationship with his pre-teen son, and watching him in the boxing scenes (where he performed the punches and footwork for a robot to mimic in the ring) made me greatly desire to see him in a human boxing role. Sure, he’ll get beaten to a pulp, but Jackman had such great finesse in Steel that I just really want to see him take that into the ring himself. The boy who played his son, Dakota Goyo, also gave a very strong performance, and his scenes with the bot named Atom (which his character rescued and restored from a scrap heap) were the very best moments of the film. Not since WALL·E have I had such great affection for a machine! But Atom was an incredible character in his own right. Which is what makes Real Steel such a success, I believe. The robots had as much personality as any human in the film, and sometimes even more, and that made for an exciting viewing experience that was deepened by a tremendous amount of goodness and heart. Even with a few “mild” expletives, Real Steel is truly a family film, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to find those from Hollywood these days.