{"id":2285,"date":"2014-01-07T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T19:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/?p=2285"},"modified":"2014-01-07T11:18:15","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T18:18:15","slug":"grudge-match","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/2014\/01\/07\/grudge-match\/","title":{"rendered":"Grudge Match"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GrudgeMatch\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Directed by: Peter Segal
\nStarring: Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Kim Bassinger, Kevin Hart, Jon Bernthal, LL Cool J, Alan Arkin
\nRated: PG-13 for sports action violence, sexual content and language<\/p>\n

As the baby boomers age, both indie movies and Hollywood studios have started paying attention, creating out more projects about older characters, often with plots directly about aging. We\u2019ve gotten \u201cThe Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,\u2019 \u201cIt\u2019s Complicated,\u201d \u201cLast Vegas,\u201d and many more over the last few years, and \u201cGrudge Match\u201d follows the same trend. Its chief difference is that its two main characters are both boxers in their seventies, with a very old conflict between them.<\/p>\n

Sylvester Stallone has been refusing to age for some years now \u2013 witness his action appearances in the \u201cExpendables\u201d movies, for example — but it\u2019s hard to ignore that the man is over seventy. All the Hollywood tricks in the makeup box and plastic surgeon\u2019s domain can only do so much (sometimes they even make things worse by looking weird). It\u2019s nice to see him in a role that directly confronts how old he is. Henry \u201cRazor\u201d Sharp is a man beaten down by life, and Stallone brings that across perfectly.<\/p>\n

Robert De Niro, on the other hand, seems to have decided he\u2019s only going to do movies that look like fun \u2013 with the notable exception of \u201cKiller Elite,\u201d he\u2019s looked like he\u2019s having a blast in pretty much every film he\u2019s made in the last five or so years. \u201cGrudge Match\u201d is in the same vein \u2013 De Niro plays Billy \u201cThe Kid\u201d McDonnen with as much joy and good humor that it\u2019s hard not to like the guy even when he\u2019s being a real jerk. Plus, he\u2019s actually letting himself look his age, which is nice in spite of the fact that it makes Stallone\u2019s battle against the flow of time more obvious.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s refreshing to see two men in their seventies actually play men in their seventies (Stallone\u2019s character in the \u201cExpendables\u201d movies can\u2019t be anywhere near that age, for example) \u2013 and then we meet Sally (Kim Basinger), a woman who actually looks like she might be almost as old as the guys are. Women in Hollywood are usually relegated to the scrap heap once they\u2019re past forty, but the movies-for-boomers trend is giving more of them work they can actually sink their teeth into, and it\u2019s awesome.<\/p>\n

Not that \u201cGrudge Match\u201d is a particularly challenging or deep flick \u2013 it\u2019s more of a \u201csports comedy with a heart\u201d type film. It\u2019s a solid B-movie, with plenty of laughs and even the occasional skewering of Gen Xers\u2019 ideas of what the Boomers are like.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fun film, and cleverly uses footage from the boxing film both its stars made in their early years on the \u201cretrospective\u201d TV specials about them we see in the movie. It\u2019s not a great film (Stallone\u2019s almost completely flat affect only handles so much expressiveness), but it\u2019s a fun one. De Niro makes almost any movie he\u2019s in worth watching, and this is no exception.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Directed by: Peter Segal Starring: Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Kim Bassinger, Kevin Hart, Jon Bernthal, LL Cool J, Alan Arkin Rated: PG-13 for sports action violence, sexual content and language As the baby boomers age, both indie movies and Hollywood studios have started paying attention, creating out more projects about older characters, often with plots directly about aging. We\u2019ve gotten \u201cThe Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,\u2019 \u201cIt\u2019s Complicated,\u201d \u201cLast Vegas,\u201d and many more over the last few years, and \u201cGrudge Match\u201d follows the same trend. Its chief difference is that its two main characters are both boxers in their seventies, with a very old conflict between them. Sylvester Stallone has been refusing to age for some years now \u2013 witness his action appearances in the \u201cExpendables\u201d movies, for example — but it\u2019s hard to ignore that the man is over seventy. All the Hollywood tricks in the makeup box and plastic surgeon\u2019s domain can only<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[47,57,54],"class_list":["post-2285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-fun","tag-rated-pg-13","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/GrudgeMatch.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2oSX4-AR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2287,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2285\/revisions\/2287"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ealasaid.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}