Grudge Match
Starring Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone
Directed by Peter Segal
All you can really do is shake your head. Shake your head that Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone, Hollywood veterans who once respectively played boxers in iconic roles, would sink to this kind of mawkish comeback story.
Grudge Match tells the vapid story of two aged Pittsburgh fighters, long since retired, who rekindle their rivalry to settle the score once and for all. The unsettled affair revolves around the fact Stallone retired the night before their title match. Thirty years later, an unintentionally funny bout between them at a video game studio, featuring both actors in embarrassing motion capture skintight green suits, goes viral and soon morphs into a highly touted reunion match that will reopen old wounds that are both predictable and trite.
To say the film is clichéd would be a horrible understatement. A seemingly bored Alan Arkin and opportunistic Kevin Hart provide some of the comic relief; The Walking Deads Jon Bernthal is the estranged son; Kim Basinger provides the backbone for the inevitable years-long love triangle that ended in heartbreak and regret; and there is even a third act car accident that needlessly hammers home the forced melodrama.
Its not that Grudge Match is totally offensive or completely unfunny; some of the jokes admittedly work on some rudimentary level. Its just that the writers, director and actors seemed all too content to play it safe and give audiences a forgettable matchup that could have been a memorable prize fight for the ages.
