Menahem Golan
5 connections found
Filmography
View:
Connections, in both directions
The story -- which draws inspiration from "Rocky," "Over the Top," "Pokémon" and Fred Savage's "The Wizard" -- is set about 15 years from now.
If you’ve seen Over the Top, then you know the petulant son and reluctant dad are bound to bond over the sport of choice, and nothing in the screenplay – credited to three writers and loosely inspired by a Richard Matheson short story – deviates from the underdog blueprint in the least.
He certainly should, and by the boatload, given the way in which Shawn Levy’s sci-fi robot-boxing film apes not only Rocky’s underdog-makes-good trajectory and in-ring finale, but also Over the Top ’s dynamic of a father making amends with the son he abandoned by beating the athletic odds while driving across expansive, picturesque country in a big rig.
Since Jackman's character drives a big truck and is trying to get acquainted with his son, I was reminded of the father-son-bonding/arm-wrestling movie Over the Top.
So Real Steel falls somewhere near the intersection of elation and shame, essentially reworking the Sylvester Stallone arm-wrestling non-classic Over The Top for the equally ridiculous sport of android fisticuffs, and mostly getting away with it.
For better or worse, the trailers set up the film as a shot-for-shot remake of Sylvester Stallone's "Over the Top," except with fighting robots instead of arm wrestling.
This is a movie that feels like it would desperately like to be part of a much simpler era, perhaps one of the Golan-Globus Reaganite warhorses of the ’80s — like the Chuck Norris vehicles The Delta Force or Invasion U.S.A.
The biggest shock of the movie is seeing Cap appear on a European subway platform wearing a suit that looks requisitioned from “The Delta Force” and a beard and bob that are unshakably Barry Gibbs.
And yet, it’s possible to luxuriate in the visceral thrill of Southpaw—until one ascends toward the bland, predictable climactic fight between Billy and his rival, while family melodrama (the plot bears some resemblance to Sylvester Stallone’s arm wrestling-cum-child-custody-battle Over the Top) cranks up, though that element dissipates surprisingly quickly.
After mythologizing his own Horatio Alger working-class hero tale in "Rocky," the Italian Stallion became the ultimate Reagan poster boy in the "Rambo" movies and went on to squander all remaining street cred with unintentionally derivative parodies ("Cobra," "Over the Top") and ill-conceived attempts to stretch his "talent" (screwball comedy in "Oscar," dystopian sci- fi in "Judge Dredd").
You'd never believe "The Expendables" was made by a man who's been in movies for 40 years (admittedly including such horrors as "Cobra" and "Over the Top") -- and directing them since 1978.