By Geno McGahee
Sly Stallone is the king of the bad movie. As good as ROCKY is, he also has movies like STOP OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT. If you were to take his entire movie career and sum it up, it would be ROCKY, FIRST BLOOD, and everything else. He really hasn’t found magic anywhere else, but he some of his movies are so bad it’s good. One of the films that falls into that category is the arm-wrestling action flick, OVER THE TOP.
Stallone plays “Lincoln Hawk,” a trucker that is reconnecting with his son, Mike (David Mendenhall), when Mike’s mother is on death’s door. Hawk hasn’t been in Mike’s life at all and this is their chance to reconnect, but Mike’s grandfather, Jason Cutler (Robert Loggia), is furious. Loggia screams every line, yells at everyone, and desperately wants to keep his grandson in his life and Hawk out of it. I love Loggia. He owns every role he ever gets and he does well here.
Mike is spoiled and acts spoiled. I have a hard time deciding which Stallone son is more annoying. Mike in this or his son in ROCKY V. I guess I’ll call it a tie. Both are incredibly annoying.
So we have one conflict between Hawk and Cutler, but there’s another. There is a big fat guy named “Bull Hurley”, played by Rick Zumwalt. For the record, there are also characters named “Mad Dog” and “Grizzly.” They all are looking forward to competing in an arm-wrestling championship in Las Vegas where they can make big money and win a truck. I guess that the arm-wrestling commission or whomever set this up assumed that arm-wrestlers are primarily truck drivers. In the end, they were right. Bull and Hawk were both truckers and they both arm wrestle at various diners. In fact, Hawk was challenged at a diner by a guy that was trained by Richie Giachetti, one of the men that trained Mike Tyson. I guess that training arm wrestlers doesn’t translate well with the techniques used in the sweet science. I also question Giachetti’s coaching. He just seemed to scream and say “come on” a few times as the rest of the crowd just yelled random things. I always get a kick out of looking at the extras in a scene and how unnaturally they behave. Watch the arm wrestling scenes and then look at the crowd rather than the stars. It can be entertaining.
Hawk, to connect to his son, allows him to drive his tractor/trailer. It was all over the road and somebody could have easily been killed. Cutler is totally right. Hawk is not a good father and is making bad decision after bad decision, including driving his tractor through the front of Cutler’s house when they don’t let him in. Another thing that he does that seems a little fucked is pulling to the side of the road to sleep. The tractor is not a sleeper and the seats of a truck are incredibly uncomfortable. Would it have hurt him to find a Motel 6 and spend 40 bucks? He had just made 1000 dollars arm-wrestling some goon.
Throughout the film, Hawk advises his son that the world “meets nobody half way,” which is remarkably a song created for the film by Kenny Loggins. Loggins was in high demand at this time and I’m still trying to figure out why. Does anyone really enjoy the music of Kenny Loggins? What the fuck does it mean anyway? “The world meets nobody half way.” I understand he’s saying that you have to get things on your own, but the way that he said it is fucked. Stallone got a writing credit on this, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he didn’t write a word. He has a tendency of borrowing written work.
You can really see just how terrible an actor Stallone is when he is pitted across from Loggia. The scenes are so uneven, but that fact does not take away from the great storyline and the absurd arm-wrestling competition scenes in this film.
First, I was surprised by the amount of people that bought tickets to this show. The place is packed with people that are overly excited about the sport of arm wrestling. Bull Hurley is really feeding into it. He sports a shirt that reads “Blaster” and just screams in the face of his foes. He is very intimidating… Well, at least he is to his opponents. A fat slob screaming can be seen every day at the Golden Coral. It’s not really scary.
Now 500 competitors from around the globe came to the event. Really? I also learned that Lincoln Hawk was part of the “trucker’s division.” What the fuck is that? This film is about as ridiculous as it gets and the characters that compete in this contest are as over the top as they can be. The fact that they are all talking smack about arm-wrestling is absurd. It’s like talking smack about kicking ass when you are playing Connect Four with somebody. Who the fuck thought this movie was a good idea? Probably Stallone.
If you’re a fan of arm-wrestling movies, you’ll love this. This may be the only movie about arm-wrestling, so I hope you cherish it. If you are not a fan, then this may not be for you. Stallone has made worse, but that doesn’t give him a pass on this one. This is a terrible flick, but it is so bad it’s good. The over the top (no pun intended) characters and Robert Loggia’s scream-acting makes this worth a watch. I recommend it and I don’t!
Rating: 5/10
I was an extra in Over the Top during the scenes filmed at the Las Vegas Hilton here in Las Vegas. I played in several different scenes, changing clothes from a suit, to a white shirt and tie, to a knit shirt and slacks. I, and the other extras, got paid $50 a day, plus lunch. Unfortunately for me, my appearances got edited out, except for my hand with a gold ring on the finger at the reporter’s desk when one of the arm wrestlers drinks a can of motor oil. So much for my big break in the entertainment industry. Also, Silvester Stallone is short as hell. He wears boots with tall heels on them to look bigger. Got to meet Robert Loggia, who played the grandfather of Stallone’s son, and Rick Zumwatt (spelling) the giant arm wrestler in the final arm-wrestling sequence with Stallone. No one could get near Stallone with his bodyguards surrounding him. This was when he was married to Bridget Neilson, and she did come on the set to yell at Sly about something. All the extras silently looked at each other and shook their heads, thinking this marriage isn’t going to last. Bingo!