AT some time in the future, Charlie (Hugh Jackman) is doing the country show circuit with a beat up truck, a crude survival sense and a dilapidated fighting robot. He owes money. He has little prospect of making any. The mother of his 11-year-old son Max (Dakota Goyo) whom Charlie has never seen has died and her sister wants to adopt him. 

Max wants to spend six months on the circuit with Charlie. Max, a whiz at repairing bots, rescues one from a garbage dump, names it Atom and sets about refurbishing it.

The story works toward pitting Atom against some truly heavy metal.  Director Shawn Levy uses CG, models and other visual fakery devices to lead us to a denouement that only a cynic would denigrate. Charlie is never far because of the prize money. Living on junk food and soft drink, father and son set about getting to know each other. That’s not easy, even though writer John Gatins has shaped the plot around some familiar relationship contrivances to energise it.

The screenplay is peppered with clichés lifted from films about parent and newly-met child learning to live with each other, confronting them with obstacles in prize contests augmented by wicked competitors.

Once you set the bots in their true context, the plot has little novelty. But it has excellent predictability.

The bots are magnificent. The sight and sound of a packed stadium screaming at a pair of them wrecking each other is a novel experience.  But unless you are betting on it, how can you get emotionally involved with a battery-powered, wireless-controlled assemblage of metal, wire, plastic, transistors and hydraulic fluid?

I approached “Real Steel” expecting a debacle. I was not disappointed, yet it was less dreadful than I feared, better than a complete no-brainer yet not so intelligent as to be uplifting.

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