Over The Top (1987)

The more I look back, the more it's shaping up that 1987 was the SECOND worst year for movies.

Especially if you consider that the largest amount of releases came out of left field.

Now normally I wouldn't have a problem with that, since a lot of good films come from this segment of the field.  But Over The Top is not your average "out of left field " film.  No: this was the result of a summit meeting between two of the biggest money-making camps of the 1980s.

Sylvester Stallone and Golan/Globus.

And in a bit of irony that would have William Shakespeare smacking his Elizabethan head, this would also lead to one of the worst products ever released by both parties.

Think about that for a second: this was the worst film released by the men responsible for Paradise Alley and Treasure of the Four Crowns, respectively.  Over The Top is worse than these.

It seems that Sly, wanting to be taken as more than the big dumb lug who won his way into peoples' hearts by boxing (Rocky) and fighting wars (Rambo), took it upon himself to expand his repertoire and become a more verbose, thoughtful hero for big, muscular Italians the world over to look up to.  So one of them ended up being 1986's Cobra, where he plays a lone cop who kills hundreds of slimy criminals.  Another film was supposed to have been a remake of Angels With Dirty Faces starring him and Christopher Reeve... unfortunately, the powers-that-be (whoever they are) decided not to have Sly and Supes sully their intellectual property and nixed the project.  I guess they figured it was okay for Robert DeNiro and Sean Penn to sully it up a few years down the road, but whaddyagonnado?

My focus on this review, however, is a film in this mega-franchise that not only was a money-loser, but was also one the absolutely worst -conceived, worst-written, worst-acted and worst-received films ever from these same individuals.

Again, worse than Paradise Alley and Treasure Of The Four Crowns.

And this is coming from someone who absolutely loves Cobra , which actually should have had less going for it than Over The Top!

Not coincidentally, at least Cobra was based on a book ("Fair Game" by Paula Gosling).  This movie?  It's based on Rocky.  The difference this time is that we're set squarely outside of the squared circle of professional boxing and instead deep into the world of professional...arm wrestling.

Arm.  Wrestling.

Yeah.  You know that game you used to play at recess or during study hall when the teacher wasn't looking?  THIS is the organized sports version with big cash prizes and high-level sponsorship and promotion. 

And YOU got a job as a doctor or a lawyer, figuring that was where the big money was?  SUCKER!

Okay, enough of this, let's wrestle with the plot now.  Lincoln Hawk (Sly) is a struggling independent truck driver who's trying to rebuild his life after a divorce from his wife Christina (Susan Blakely). As she lay dying, her final wish is that she reclaims his son Michael (David Mendenhall), who has taken the last name of his grandfather Jason (Robert Loggia), a rich and powerful man who had been instrumental in keeping Lincoln and Christina apart. Lincoln does his best to mend fences but Michael is a stubborn military school-bred brat who doesn't think much of being abandoned for the open lure of the road.

...then he finds out that old dad is also an arm-wrestler and picks up extra money going here, there and everywhere by defeating opponents with his mighty arm.  That doesn't change their relationship much but hey: his dad arm wrestles.  Wow.

Possession of Michael becomes key between Lincoln and Jason with everything coming to a boiling point at the National Arm Wrestling Competition in Las Vegas, promising a big payoff to the winner, just enough for Lincoln to pay his debts, regain full possession of his son and live happily ever after.  Gee, I wonder how things will turn out?

I have no idea what Sly was thinking here; he already wrote and/or starred in some huge successes with the Rocky and Rambo movies and even scored what could be called a major independent hit (meaning not dependent on the name Rocky or Rambo) with 1981's Nighthawks.  He even knew that his persona was silly enough to poke fun at himself with appearances on "The Muppet Show" and his delightfully self-effacing interviews on any given talk show of the day.  However, Sly plays Lincoln Hawk as the second coming of Jesus, returned to Earth as a truck-driving, arm-wrestling sensitive guy who specializes in soft-spoken monologues and bellowing war cries as he brings down his opponents' arms.

Really, Sly - come on: Rocky Balboa, John Rambo, Marion Cobretti and even Deke DaSilva were typical tough guy fodder.  But with Over The Top, you've essayed a man whose only character development trait is turning his ball cap backwards on his head before stepping into the arm wrestling arena.

Did I really just write "arm wrestling arena" in one of my reviews?  Yep, I did.  My God....

I was hoping for a scene where Sly had a crisis of confidence because he lost his hat and couldn't arm wrestle without anything to turn backwards on his head.

We have dramatic impetus enough, though, with the introduction of his son Michael, as played by David Mendenhall, whom the astute will happily remember as Peter from 1983's Space Raiders and the voice for many popular Eighties cartoon series, including that of Daniel Witwicky from the early animated "Transofrmers", both the TV series and 1986 movie.  At least in Space Raiders he had the benefit of acting alongside Vince Edwards and Patsy Pease.

I hate seeing spoiled brats in movies even if they're less bratty by the end due to the shared events in the story.  The only purpose spoiled brats in movies serve is to is to get what's coming to them.  Michael doesn't, of course, but I guess that would have required better acting and an improved script that added a scene behind the woodshed.

As the mom whose only purpose is to lie in bed and look paler with every scene, Susan Blakely actually deserved the honor of being first to pass on this project.  Blakely has been in such worthy films as The Towering Inferno, The Concorde...Airport '79 and the actually-classy 1983 Frances Farmer TV biopic "Will There Really Be A Morning?", which earned her a Golden Globe nomination.  I mean, she's an honest-to-goodness actress with talent and everything.  Here, all her dramatic highlights consist of her literally phoning in her performance; she has the phone to her ear and is speaking with Lincoln or Michael or both while staring off in the distance looking all pale and sickly.  Damn it; Hollywood did the same thing to Faye Dunaway as detective Frank Sinatra's dying wife in 1980's The First Deadly Sin.  So, does Blakely at least get a good, dramatic final death throe just to prove what a fantastic actress she really is?  Nope, she dies off-screen.  Not every movie can be Terms of Endearment, I suppose.  Sorry, Susan.

And then we have Robert Loggia.  Big Bob.  Every movie like this needs a villain, and I guess Loggia fits the bill as one, even though he basically plays the evil stepmother who keeps the princess (his daughter) away from her one true love (the truck driver).   It's not like Loggia doesn't do a good job: he shouts and screams and makes the veins bulge on his neck and his temples just like any role being filled by Robert Loggia would come to be known by.  However, the problem here is Loggia's Cutler character just isn't "Robert Loggia" enough.  He needs more scenes where he's screaming, his veins are bulging, his voice is shaking with rage.  This is like Robert Loggia Lite we're witnessing here and it just isn't enough for a movie named Over The Top.

Even wrestler Terry Funk - who was one of the absolute highlights of Paradise Alley as far as I'm concerned - is about as muted as Loggia, if not moreso.  In Alley, playing the dumb brutish pug Frankie The Thumper with a heavy verbal dosage of Damon Runyon's colorful thugs, every one of Funk's scenes was a highlight and well worth watching for the delight Funk seemed to take in playing such a great part.  Here, as bodyguard Ruker, all he does is wear a suit and get punched by Sly in a scene.  Nothing else.  Maybe there was a sense of being upstaged feared by someone?  Gotta wonder....

As a matter of fact, the only one who really brings any sense of "over-the-top" acting to this piece is the secondary villain - Bob 'Bull' Hurley, played by Rick Zumwalt, who was himself a professional arm wrestler...

(what, did you think I was making that stuff up about professional arm wrestling?  Google it, I dare ya...)

...anyway, Zumwalt gives his all: eyes bulging, voice roaring, bald head sweating and coming very close to ripping off a few peoples' arms a few times.  Now why couldn't HE have been the star of Over The Top?

I'll tell you why: because this was Sly's (and Golan/Globus') movie and, for better or worse, Sly was going to headline it and see it through to the bitter end.  Sure, he'd come up against huge, hulking foes with wild hair, pointy beards, arms bigger than your legs and voices you could hear bellow in the next county, but overcoming huge obstacles was his specialty.  He did it all before..he'd do it again.

As director, Menahem Golan himself channeled a lot of Sly's directing flair in this movie.  Lots of fast-moving camera sweeps, flashing lights, sweaty close-ups of men in battle, loving setups of our main man mouthing dialogue from scribes Gary Conway, David Engleback, Sly himself (SURPRISE!!) and veteran writer Stirling Silliphant, whom you may remember as the man who made a bet with Harold P. Warren about getting a movie made...and we all saw how well THAT turned out.

(Sylvester Stallone as Torgo.  Hmmm...)

But in the end, this movie cost $25 million to make.  Yeah, count 'em: twenty-five million bucks, all for a movie about guys arm wrestling.  Unfortunately the big arm wrestling contingent didn't come out in full force (must have had to have washed their ball caps or something) and Over The Top earned back a little over $16 million.  Ouch.  Not even a Giorgio Moroder soundtrack featuring Sammy Hagar,  Asia, Eddie Money, Frank Stallone (natch) and Kenny Loggins could help earn any more than this back to help Sly and company turn their epic into anything less than a mis-step of gargantuan proportions.

Okay, wait a minute; what in the hell is Kenny Loggins doing contributing a song to A MOVIE ABOUT ARM WRESTLING?  I can understand a golf comedy, a Navy recruitment film, that's all well and good... but this is A MOVIE ABOUT ARM WRESTLING.  Did we really need a chart-topping song about meeting people emotionally at a middle ground in A MOVIE ABOUT ARM WRESTLING?  I'd think not but hey; I'm not Kenny Loggins.

After professional arm wrestling failed to catch the world on fire like professional wrestling or even professional tiddly-winks, it seems Stallone and Golan-Globus parted company, none of their other collective works moving on any further than the planning stages thereafter.  Oh yeah, he'd go on to do more Rambos and Rockys and a few Oscars and Lock Ups and Cliffhangers and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoots after this.  But as far as trying to create new sports rages, Sly laid low on that front.

However, not as low as Over The Top eventually plumbed.  Then again, what can you expect from a movie where the toughest guys in the room can't use their thumbs?