Real Steel

I saw this movie with a good crowd.  The kind of interactive crowd that makes seeing a bad movie not quite so bad.  Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that Real Steel was bad, I am just implying that it was not as good as I thought it would be.  The film missed all the moments that could have made it great.  All the opportunities it had to really make an emotional impact it simply glossed over.  Now I bet at this very second you are thinking, hey now hold on you are talking about "emotional impact" in a movie about boxing robots?!  But darn it, just because this is a geeky techno action flick doesn't mean it can just forget about the human story.  And then when it did decide to focus in on the father-son "realization" it pushed it way too hard, and way too late in the story.  Close-up-on-tear-from-boy's-face-to-close-up-on-Jackman's-one-time-lover-back-to-tear-back-to-lover-now-slow-mo-on-Jackman-shadow-boxing-now-back-to-tear.  I can almost feel them in the edit suite bashing out that gem, HA.  All the priceless moments I kept routing for never happened.  But that doesn't mean it wasn't fun to watch ;)