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Over the Top
Stallone redefines baseball caps in this tribute to arm wrestling
The Movie
1987 saw Sylvester Stallone at the beginning of a major slide in his career. He'd already done four Rocky films, and made the massive mistake of trading the leading role in Beverly Hills Cop for Cobra. With Over the Top, he started a spiral down that would see him share the screen with Estelle Getty at one point. Estelle Gettty.
Despite its spot at the top of the slide, Over the Top is not a horrible movie. It's certainly not a good movie, but it's not horrible. With a soundtrack loaded with stereotypical '80s pop-rock, Stallone at his tough-guy best and a feel-good story, this is the kind of movie that will captivate you with a Saturday afternoon showing on TNT. There's just something about Stallone that makes him a hero you can get behind.
Stallone is Lincoln Hawk (depending on what part of the movie you're watching (see The Extras)), a small-time trucker with a broken-down rig. After years away from his family, he shows up on the day of his son's graduation from military school, to drive him home. Hawk's wife is sick, and she wants him to reconnect with his son, thinking the ride home would give them time together.
Unfortunately for Hawk, his son Mike (David Mendenhall) is a prissy cadet with a serious chip on his shoulder toward the father he believes abandoned him. I never went to military school, but for some reason, in the movies it seems like it's the last place to send your kid unless you want them to feel unwanted (see also The Toy). Mike moves through his range of emotions with the speed of a rocket, going from freak-out to loving to priss and back in the span of a scene. Children of the '80s will remember this kind of acting from his turn as the voice of Daniel in Transformers: The Movie.
While spending time together, Mike finds out that Hawk engages in arm wrestling at truck stops, and has a reputation as one of the best. Having been indoctrinated against his father by his rich grandfather (Robert Loggia), he struggles with his interest in his dad's success and his desire to know his father. While they grow closer, his grandfather schemes to get his grandson back and remove Hawk from his life.
In another movie, probably one without Stallone, this story would be the main plot, but here it serves as background to the arm-wrestling plot. Facing financial trouble and a lack of opportunities, Hawk puts everything he has on the line at the Arm Wrestling Championships in Las Vegas. This aspect of the film, which barrels through the second half of the film, taking slight breaths to address the grandfather/son story, is a typical '80s montage, stretched to the very limits. Scene after scene of arm wrestling, an activity that's quite limited in unique moments, is scored by inspiring rock music, until our hero faces his destiny, battling the immovable object in the final climactic battle. Hey...just like in those Rocky movies!
While Stallone gets the focus, the audience probably would have loved to have seen more of the other arm wrestlers, who make quite an impression in very limited screen-time, especially two guys who look like Napoleon Dynamite and Gallagher on steroids. I know a documentary on the arm wrestling circuit, Pulling John, is in production, and Livin' to Pull is available through limited channels, but whether their worlds are as wacky as the world Stallone built remains to be seen. It's certainly a stretch to think so.
The DVD
Warner Brothers has packed their one-disc edition of Over the Top in a standard keepcase with very appropriate cover art taken from the film's poster. The disc features static anamorphic widescreen menus designed around art and photos from the film, with options to view the film, select scenes, watch the trailer and choose languages. Language tracks include English and French Dolby 2.0, with English, French and Spanish subtitles and English closed captioning. The scene selection menus have still previews and titles for each chapter.
The Quality
Surprisingly, considering the movie's age and status as a B-level (or possibly C-level) budget catalog title, the anamorphic widescreen transfer for Over the Top is very impressive. For most of the movie, the image is rather sharp, featuring good levels of fine detail and a nicely varied color palette with solid skin tones. Grain is evident throughout the movie, along with a modicum of dirt and damage, but it's in no way distracting.
The audio track, presented in Dolby 2.0, is rather active, using the separation in the speakers to give weight to the music, a very effective tactic for a movie with such a pop/rock soundtrack. The dialogue is, for the most part, clear and distortion-free, though scenes at the championships may have a bit too much going on in terms of sound, as some dialogue becomes muddy.
The Extras
There's only one extra, which is the film's theatrical trailer. Previews from the '80s tend to look pretty bad in comparison to today's slick trailers, but this one, though extremely short, isn't terrible. Of course, it does quickly illustrate one of the sloppiest parts of this film, which is the changing, halfway through the movie, of Stallone's character's name from Lincoln Hawk to Lincoln Hawks. If they couldn't manage to keep the main character's name straight, the rest of the movie didn't stand much of a chance,
The Bottom Line
This is pure '80s cheese, starring one of the gods of the genre. Of course, because of that, it's an eminently fun movie to just lose one's self in. It's not patently offensive to a thinking man's intellect and never boring, though the plot is blatantly stupid and nonsensical. The DVD makes the movie look and sound better than anyone's seen it in a long time, but the lack of extras might make you question whether you need to own it. Stallone devotees should be happy with this disc, while nostalgia seekers and pop-culture fans might find their cheese quota met by a rental.
Francis Rizzo III is a native Long Islander, where he works in academia. In his spare time, he enjoys watching hockey, writing and spending time with his wife, daughter and puppy.Follow him on Twitter
*The Reviewer's Bias section is an attempt to help readers use the review to its best effect. By knowing where the reviewer's biases lie on the film's subject matter, one can read the review with the right mindset.
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