Movie Reviews: Grudge Match

 Getting on for ten years ago, now, I theorised that with the modern world offering hundreds of TV channels, the vast depths of the internet, and almost every known form of music on demand, people felt overwhelmed and wanted something familiar.

 This was why fading stars like Sly Stallone made a comeback. People needed something they recognised.

 That nostalgic second wind couldn't last, as recent offerings from Sly, Arnold and Bruce have flopped at the box office, and apparently "Grudge Match," which sees Stallone and Robert DeNiro as aging boxing rivals, has suffered the same fate.

 Obviously, I was still dumb enough to see it, but it's hard to recommend from many angles.

 First the good: It's funny in places. Not hysterically funny, but amusing, and both stars gamely make idiots of themselves where required. There's also a nice running joke about people immediately reaching for camera phones every time it looks like the old guys are about to embarrass themselves in YouTube-worthy fashion.

 There are a few cute touches for boxing fans - Stallone's character seems to have been named Henry "Razor" Sharp just to make an early "Down goes Razor!" joke - and... Nope. That sentence had an "and" that was going nowhere. I've got nothing, on this one. It was a midly amusing way to kill a few hours, but there's too much wrong with it to make it worth the effort.

 Firstly, it's playing way, way too broad. There's even a "cute" Grandson involved to try to appeal to the broadest possible number of demographics. Child actors are always risky, and only pay off if they're very, very good child actors with a useful function in the story. The kid in question isn't a good actor and did little to furnish a movie about old men punching each other in the face. If anything, he only made me want to punch him, which I'm sure is not what the writers had in mind.

 There's more filler in the form of a laboured love-triangle involving Kim Basinger (remember her?!), meaning there are now three Oscar winners wasting their time in this film.

 The script also suffers from having two leads the audience is meant to like, meaning we can't really root for either one easily. DeNiro is supposed to have been something of a dick in the past, but is immediately humanised by his burgeoning relationship with his long-lost son (The Walking Dead's John Bernthal) and even if DeNiro had been made the out-and-out bad guy, this would have left us supporting Sly Stallone as an underdog boxer, which we've already been through on six fucking occasions in another franchise. Seven if we change sports and count the Christ-awful "Over The Top," in which we were asked to support Sly Stallone as an underdog arm wrestler.

  Even the boxing scenes aren't anything to write home about. The leads are portrayed in a way I suspect is accurate to real life - Stallone hitting harder but DeNiro being the better boxer. It's worth remembering that DeNiro had three amateur bouts in preparation for "Raging Bull," winning two. That's more than Sly's ever done, ignoring all the times he's had his ass kicked by professional fighters.

 Despite any pedigree present, it's painfully obvious that both men are far too old for this stuff. Scenes of Stallone running behind ancient trainer Alan Arkin's mobility scooter are shot from so far away they might as well have just held up a title card saying "Sly's Stunt Double Goes For A Run," and both men are slow and arthritic in the ring.

 Of course, that's the whole point of the film. Old men fighting. But it's hard to get worked up about badly thrown, telegraphed punches from men in their late sixties.

 It did lead me to wonder about boxing movies in general. The whole point of a well-thrown punch in boxing is that it's hard to see it coming, which inherently makes it difficult to film in a way that's exciting for an audience. But the fact that I began contemplating this in the middle of the climactic (and by the end, maudlin) finale is probably a sign of how pedestrian the whole affair is.

 It's not an awful film. It's not even a bad film. It's just an absolutely mediocre one, which is almost worse. See it if you want an occasionally funny way to kill a wet afternoon. Or, if you want to see an aged action star in a fantastic boxing film, go and watch Million Dollar Baby.