Charlie (Hugh Jackman) is a drinking, gambling, reckless kind of guy who works in the ‘near future’ where robots fight as boxers. Whenever possible, he and his girlfriend Bailey (Evangeline Lilly) pieces together scrap metal to create 8-foot-tall creatures… except on the occasion where they can steal-from-Peter-to-pay-Paul and buy an ‘ordered’ robot.
Enter Max (Dakota Goyo) a mouthy eleven year old kid who happens to be Charlie’s son, left on his doorstep for the summer after Max’s mother passes away. He’ll live with his aunt (Hope Davis) in the fall, but for now, while she’s on a trip to Itay, Max is stuck with the dad he never knew. Like any young boy, Max, happens to be a whiz at video games and it’s the Japanese who happen to build the best robot of all. Could Max end up being lucrative to Charlie in a way he never thought imaginable? Oddly, as Charlie attempts one last shot at a comeback in the ring, he manages to get a shot at being a real father, too.
The film is a bit violent for young boys and suggests money can be used to buy relationships, so one can’t be certain who the target audience of this film will be. A better message seems to be that no matter what your father is like, or what he does for a living, all kids worship them and just want to be loved. In this case, they have an original but odd way of expressing that. Two tiaras