Three out of Five stars
Running time: 127 minutes

Real Steel is an enjoyable enough family film which, despite the cliches and product placement, will provide more than enough entertainment for young boys of all ages.

Whats it about?
In the not-too-distant future the public has grown tired of human boxing and instead flock to the spectacle of robot boxing. Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is a down and out robot boxing promoter who reluctantly takes in his son, Max (Dakota Goyo) and works with him to bring an old robot into the professional robot boxing world.

The Good
The film is much more family-oriented than the marketing leads you to believe and you soon realise the film is about nothing more than robots fighting. To that end the robots themselves are well-designed and highly detailed. You can’t fault the visual effects with the fighting movements being fluid, however the spectacle of the robot fighting soon wears off.

The Bad
The film recycles so many boxing/father-and-son movie cliches you’d swear you just flicked through a Rocky-era edition of Empire. Hugh Jackman is bare-able but not exactly likeable as Charlie Kenton. The atrocious treatment he shows his son make it hard to believe the rapid about-face he inevitably has before the end credits. Dakota Goyo (who looks unnervingly like Jake Lloyd of Star Wars fame) is a likeable kid actor whose enthusiasm provides the only moments of engagement not involving robots.

Worth Seeing?
Despite the fact that this movie is way too long, grab your young son, brother or cousin and take him along. Any kid or adult who liked the Transformers movies will find enough in Real Steel to leave satisfied.