I have been cautiously optimistic about Grudge Match from the moment it was announced. This is because Rocky and Raging Bull are among my favorite movies of all time, and I would immensely enjoy seeing two of my favorite actors, Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro, have a hit together. The whole charm of this film is seeing Sylvester “Rocky” Stallone and Robert “Raging Bull” De Niro in the ring together, and in that sense Grudge Match would not have existed if either did not agree to star. No other actors would possibly work in the roles. There are no other actors in their late 60s that anyone would want to see boxing each other in a movie. Stallone and De Niro get the pass because of their past glories.
Speaking of past glories, I also really wanted to see these two icons have a hit, especially since they both had a rough 2013. Stallone’s three films — Bullet to the Head, Escape Plan, and Homefront (which Stallone wrote but did not star in) all underperformed, though Escape Plan was a much bigger hit overseas. De Niro appeared in five other movies this year, most of which were terrible, such as The Big Wedding and The Family. But it’s even worse than that because it’s been a long time since Stallone had a hit outside of his three franchises (Rocky, Rambo, and The Expendables), and De Niro has had rough year after rough year. In fact, though he’s had a few gems since, the last time De Niro had a great year at the movies was 1997 when he starred in Jackie Brown, Wag the Dog and Copland, the last of which coincidentally co-starred Stallone (and probably is Stallone’s best non-Rocky film from an acting standpoint).
So yes, I was hoping to see a hit film for both their sakes, especially since the story itself seems like something these two could do in their sleep: Henry “Razor” Sharp (Stallone) and Billy “The Kid” McDonnen (De Niro) are two light heavyweight Pittsburgh boxers who had a heated rivalry thirty years ago. After splitting two matches, Razor pulled out of the rubber match and retired after he discovered the love of his life, Sally (Kim Basinger), had an affair with Kid. A TV special about the canceled fight airs thirty years later, and both men are now in very different positions. Kid has parlayed his fame into being an owner of a car dealership and a bar where he regularly performs a lame puppet show about his three decade old rivalry with Razor. On the opposite side of town, Razor has lost his fortune and barely makes his ends meet by working in a steel mill. The TV special drums up interest in the pair, and Dante Slate, Jr. (Kevin Hart), the son of their former promoter, manages to get the two a deal to appear in a new boxing video game. However, the old rivals began brawling during their motion capture shoot, leading to a viral internet hit and a sizable contract to finally have a third match to settle their feud once and for all.
Naturally the fight is considered a joke by everyone but Razor and Kid. Razor goes into training under his former trainer. “Lightning” Conlon (Alan Arkin), who does little more than throw out a constant barrage of old age jokes, while Kid is trained by his son with Sally, B.J. (Jon Bernthal), whom Kid has never had a relationship with. Kid also finds out that he is a grandfather, though he struggles with accepting that role because of his vanity.
Obviously the most fascinating characters here are Razor and Kid, and the two actors don’t disappoint. Stallone’s Razor is the sort of everyman we’d might imagine Rocky Balboa would be if he didn’t have five sequels to fight through, while De Niro’s Kid is the out-of-shape, vain son of a gun with delusions of grandeur like his retired LaMotta was in Raging Bull. Late in the film De Niro’s Kid yells at Stallone, “the whole world is laughing at us!” and you understand that the canceled fight has haunted his ego for thirty years. So while the two have excellent chemistry, the problem is there are other people in the movie.
And by God, these supporting characters are awful. Kevin Hart’s character is the same kind of loud, smack-talking black character that we’ve seen Chris Tucker and Martin Lawrence play a dozen times each. That schtick hasn’t gotten any funnier unless you’re the type that thinks a black guy saying “shit just got real!” is still funny in 2013. It’s as if the people who wrote this movie had never met an African American in their life and infused Hart’s character with a list of obnoxious things they’ve heard other black comedians say in movies. Yet this is impossible because co-writer Tim Kelleher is a former writer for The Arsenio Hall Show and In Living Color, so you’d expect that he’d know the difference between an actual African American character and a tired stereotype.
However, Arkin’s character isn’t much better. He generally just rolls around in his scooter and says stuff about being old. It’s at least funnier than Hart’s schtick, but that’s like saying a sixth grade orchestra is slightly better than a fourth grade one. Everyone else is equally cliche: Basinger is the woman in the center of a love triangle whose only characteristic is to fawn over Razor, Bernthal is hurt by his father’s lack of interest in him despite being old enough to have come to terms about it, and even Razor’s factory co-workers are the type of chummy blue collar guys written by screenwriters who seemingly have never actually met blue collar guys. The writers also seem to have no concept of how long it usually takes for a video to go viral, because Razor and Kid’s brawling video has “a million views” and they already have been offered a fight contract before they are even bailed out of prison a few hours later. Sure, and “Charlie Bit My Finger” got all of its twenty billion views before the kids had their next naptime, I guess.
So the audience has to endure Arkin’s character telling eye-rolling old jokes, Hart being a loud mouth little man, Basinger’s character’s constant emotional worrying over Razor, and everything said by the youngster who plays Kid’s grandson, who is one of those little kids in movies who inadvertently says and does inappropriate things. These four factors ruin what could be a very funny and very poignant comedy. Each character is bad enough on its own to ruin an otherwise great comedy, and Grudge Match fails at juggling all of them, clouding the perfectly fine story about coming to terms with one’s age and past that everyone who is buying a ticket wants to see.
Yet the film works in the last forty minutes or so in the lead-up to the fight and the actual fight. The fight choreography is extremely impressive and both De Niro and Stallone know how to tell a great story in the ring, despite being a combined 135 years old when this was shot. In fact, this sequence is frustrating because it shows how good this film COULD have been, if only the right creative talent was involved. Director Peter Segal is a comedy veteran, but not of particularly good ones (Nutty Professor II, Anger Management, 50 First Dates, The Longest Yard). Similarly, the script was co-written by TV writers Rodney Rothman and Tim Kelleher, though a screenwriter with much better instincts for this sort of material (Stallone) is already right there and should have done a rewrite. Who writes a better “underdog has one last shot at glory” story than Stallone? Definitely not these two guys.
Finally, I do have to give a ton of credit to whomever did the Jeff Bridges TRON: Legacy-style de-aging effects during the opening sequence. It’s scary good how far impressive that technique has become. Lastly, stick around during the credits for a very funny scene with two brilliant cameos, which is funnier than any other scene in the movie. Unfortunately, you have to see a very unfunny scene with terrible CGI first with De Niro’s head terribly plastered on someone else’s body before it gets to the good one.
Rating: The real fight here isn’t between Stallone and De Niro, it’s Stallone and De Niro trying to salvage a meaningful movie from a script full of terrible comedy cliches (4.5/10).
Recent Comments