Over The Top.

Okay I'm calling it the 'Stallone Tour' now, since my Stallone month didn't even last a week - and our final stop is here. Will it be another truly terrible movie like Death Race 2000? Would it be another so hilariously bad, it's good movie like Paradise Alley? Or a surprisingly decent movie like Cobra? Let's find out...

Over The Top is the latest film on our list, being released in 1987 - this was his next movie after Cobra with Stallone once again helping write the screenplay...oh God. You remember how I mentioned that hilarious arm wrestling scene in Paradise Alley? Foreshadowing!

Despite being panned by critics, it still holds a warmer critical reaction than Cobra did so things are looking up, with much of the complaints being similar to those I had with Paradise Alley, only none of the critics seemed to be laughing like I was.

Stallone plays Hawk, who is oddly...cute, he is just a normal guy, who loves his son and just wants his son to respect him after Jason Cutler manipulated everything to make him look like a bad guy, Hawk isn't a bad guy, he fucks up and makes mistakes sure, but he is human and that makes him pretty unique out of the Stallone characters I've experienced so far. I can honestly say I really enjoyed Stallone's performance, all of his walls come down and he really goes all out. The child actor though....not so much, David Mendenhall isn't so much a bad actor as he is just a typical child actor which is just never very good. Even with Mendenhall's lacklustre performance, with such a strangely warm Stallone character, it's hard not be charmed slightly by the scenes they share and their central father and son bonding story.

Basically Over the Top is about a man reconnecting with his son, as his ex-wife is dying, they bond through the power of truck driving, arm wrestling and battling the boys evil grandfather - who hates Stallone because he is...common? This is oddly unexplored and makes some of their dramatic clashes towards the end of the movie feel oddly flat. Anyway, Hawk fucks it up, makes an idiot of himself, gets himself arrested and goes to Vegas to bet his fortune on arm wrestling, selling his precious truck to make it. Making the film a much more generic, Rockyesque movie, for the last half an hour.

To give Stallone some credit on his writing ability, there is a moment in the middle of the movie, which sadly goes nowhere and has no real impact on anything but is still nonetheless a sign that Stallone can write. Hawk, frustrated at how spoilt his son Mike is, decides to drive Mike by truck to see his dying mother, so he can get him some real life grounding and some bonding along the way of course though, this takes several days rather than an hour if he had flown so they surprise, surprise, turn up too late, like wow, way to smack your cheesy 80's montages in the face with some reality there, Stallone.

Can we just talk arm wrestling for a minute? I mean I get why he chose this sport, it's a pure test of physical strength and there is a lot of mind over matter in it, in many ways arm wrestling could be played for much more dramatic effect than things like boxing or whatever because it isn't violent, so much, it's just two guys trying to best each other with strength only, it's hard to articulate what I'm trying to say here it's just there is a world of difference between punching someone until they fall down, and trying to overpower someone's arm. I mean boxing takes a lot of skill, don't get me wrong, and this probably takes less so but there is just something...so much more...to know you took down your opponent on sheer physical strength, there is no lucky punch or whatever to be seen here. But either way it just doesn't work as well as it could have had mainly because it's played so...realistically, the way the arm wrestling matches are edited makes it seem it could have easily come from a real match, but this is Stallone dammit, I came to see something as basic as arm wrestling turned into a wildly over edited, overly dramatic epic battle of mind and body, I want more than just goofy slow motion - I mean they keep saying how it requires all this technique and so on and like he loses a match, oh my God will he lose the tournament?! But it's just played so real it is actually quite boring, just two men holding hands and then one of them loses.

And don't worry, we don't just have arm wrestling - this is a Stallone movie after all. We still get to see Stallone beat up some guys and there is a car chase...in a truck plus it's a truck, so as you can imagine some carnage will be made with it, just a shame there wasn't more of this stuff.

Over the Top may well be the cheesiest movie I have ever seen, power ballad montages (seriously, worst soundtrack ever - it's one cheesy 80's ballad after another with rarely a break), winning the respect of your son, battling the man, telling tales of heart vs riches, conquering the giants etc - I just wanna clench my fist, thrust it in the air and shake it. The whole thing is just so melodramatic. 

So do I recommend it? Despite being called over the top...the film is oddly muted and although I did quite enjoy Stallone playing a much more vulnerable character for once, the film was just ultimately boring and no amount of cheese seemed to save that. Shame.

Think About It!

-Locke