No zeal for futuristic Real Steel

Real Steel (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Shawn Levy. Starring Hugh Jackman, Dakota Goyo, Evangeline Lilly.

Real Steel taught me two things: first, that what sets one lifeless piece of machinery apart from another is its can-do attitude; and second, that giant robots fighting one another is much less interesting than I ever would have imagined.

Real Steel is set in a near-future version of America in which human prizefighters have been replaced in the ring by robots - for safety reasons, apparently, although the robots fling large pieces of themselves into the audience and come within inches of stepping on children an awful lot. Oh well, as long as the fighters aren't getting hurt.

Hugh Jackman plays Charlie, a retired boxer who has taken up a second career as a really bad robot boxing manager. One day while on a break from losing all the time, he meets up with his estranged 11-year-old son and discovers a low-end robot buried at the junkyard that is, for some reason, the best robot ever.

Real Steel is a traditional boxing movie through and through, and its strict adherence to the sports movie conventions set by Rocky takes it to some very strange places. Boxing movies are all about an underdog rising up from the slums (or the junkyard, I suppose) and becoming a champion because they've got heart. Moxie is sometimes an acceptable substitute.

But how can a remote-controlled robot have heart, or moxie, or even pep? What makes it special? The film doesn't seem to know, and spends considerable energy dodging the question.

Some of the requisite moxie/heart is outsourced to the two human characters, but this doesn't help much. Charlie gives the robot an edge by teaching it some boxing moves, because apparently no one in the league has ever thought of doing that before. This is the same as a wrecked 1984 Honda Civic winning the Indy 500 because someone told the driver to stick to the inside lane.

But making no sense has never hurt a sports movie before, and Real Steel's true failings are in its ludicrous presentation. If the robot boxing film genre were a thriving thing, this movie would be its parody. The subplot about Charlie's son reaching out to the robot like a father figure, the bizarre hints that the robot is developing a soul, the two villains who I swear to you are Boris and Natasha from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show: these are all moments of such baffling awfulness that even I wonder if I might be making them up.

And yet... the movie is hard to hate. In its better moments, Real Steel is merely clichéd, and clichés have their entertainment value. The film is only slightly worse than it looks.

Rated PG-13 for damage to appliances.
3 out of 5

50/50 (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Jonathan Levine. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick.

Deeply personal, no-nonsense comedy/drama about life and death.

After being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, 27-year-old Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is pulled in all directions by his rookie therapist (Anna Kendrick), his frantic mother (Anjelica Huston), his ambivalent girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard), and his deranged best friend (Seth Rogen).

This is a frank and funny take on a cancer patient's survival story. (The usual banalities like "personal journey" just don't fit here). There are no spiritual epiphanies or inspiring transformations - just moments of apathy, rage, depression, acceptance, and more rage in no particular order.

A fully character-driven story such as this required a cast capable of straddling the worlds of comedy and drama without leaning too far either way, and it found one. Anna Kendrick is perhaps the most memorable among them as a nervous and awkward therapist even younger than her patient. Her bumbling attempts at providing comfort venture close to being cartoonish, but she is too earnest to drift down the path of mere comic relief.

Even Seth Rogen is good. It's easy to forget - preferable, even - that Rogen's obnoxious style of comedy is actually kind of funny when it's not center stage. Two hours of it in The Green Hornet made me want to die, but he shines in a situation like this as an oafish but well-meaning support character.

Highly recommended.
Rated R for hair massacre.
4.5 out of 5