Don’t let Real Steel‘s robots steal your money

It’s hard to expect a movie centering on the world of robotic boxing to be top-notch cinema, but somehow even Hugh Jackman’s rugged Australian charm can’t save Real Steel, a wannabe action flick with flawed plot and mediocre acting.
Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, a washed up boxer desperate to get back into the ring with the help of his technologically advanced robots. The movie’s opening sequence offers a flimsy introduction, dragging the viewer through the Texas mud as Kenton places a $20,000 bet on his robot’s battle with a raging bull. Real Steel wastes no time in setting up its clichéd plot: an attractive girl in the stands catches Kenton’s eye, he loses both the fight and his money, and his life goes downhill. Kenton sells the custody of his son, Max (Dakota Goyo), to Max’s aunt and uncle for $100,000. They then proceed to hand him over to his deadbeat father for the summer without so much as a second thought, even though the two have been separated for all eleven years of Max’s life.
The utter idiocy of the storyline and the disappointing action sequences fall short of being even mildly entertaining. As much as one may enjoy watching two-ton steel robots tearing each other to pieces, it’s hard to be riveted by a plot whose main source of dramatic tension is whether or not a robot named “Noisy Boy” can make it to the second round without his head being smashed into smithereens. The illegal, underground robot boxing rings prove comical, and by the end of the film, it’s hard to believe anyone could care whether Kenton or his robots make it out alive.
Jackman’s performance falls far short of being remotely believable, and his character’s ill-conceived plans to win his money back are so poorly constructed that his young son repeatedly calls him an idiot. It’s impossible to have sympathy for Kenton, who brusquely pushes away everyone he cares about and lacks an ounce of intelligence. Evangeline Lilly attempts to add an element of romance as Kenton’s childhood friend, but she is little more than a temporary diversion from the less-than-thrilling antics of the father and son duo making money and taking the world by storm with their underdog robot fighter.
The movie’s only redeeming quality lies in Goyo’s performance. A sweet, bizarre combination of Justin Bieber and Neil Patrick Harris, he carries the viewer through the stalled plot and pathetic attempts at humor on his tiny 11-year-old shoulders. His character, although predictable, provides some respite from Jackman’s fading Southern accent and forced acting. Max’s occasional quips lighten the mood considerably, and his pre-boxing routine, in which he dances to hip-hop songs with his robot, is a corny but enjoyable prelude to the nonsensical titanium brawling.
Real Steel certainly provides unintentional laughs, most of them coming from poorly executed attempts at poignancy, like when Kenton dramatically claims that he would travel “1,200 miles for a kiss.” But even if Real Steel was just a block away, it wouldn’t be worth seeing.