Review of The Champ (1931) by Arshi R — 19 Mar 2010

Grade: C+.

Dated? Check. Poliarized characters with tunnel vision? Check. Cheesy dialogue? Check. Still worth Seeing? Check.

Why is it worth seeing? Well, you'll see a young Jackie Cooper give on hell of a child performance which is pretty dang rare. Also, the film, though at times plotted unrealistically, evokes raw emotions, pure blacks and pure whites in the main characters, and has no pretentions about it. The tone is not at all cynical about its own lack of realism, something that a lot of today's writers can't seem to do without, so its a nice change of pace.

The Father(The Champ) and son (Dink) are portrayed in a classical reversal of manners in this film; meaning the son behaves infinitely more mature than his childish and irresponsible father, a rudimentarily used effect, but it works just enough. Some of the wilfully blind devotion of Dink (Cooper), is a bit over the top, as is The Champ's excessive idiocy at times (Wallace beery, in an academy award winning role). Dink shows maturity well beyond his years, but some of it seems authentic because of his poor, ruffian youth.

I wasn't buying some of the plot twists, most notably when The Champ buys his son a horse out of the blue, after they seem to have been characterized as somewhat poor people. I dunno, maybe horses were less expensive back in the day or something, but it seems a tad sensationalized.

Much of the film is dedicated to Dink just putting up with his father's bad habits, and the natural roller-coaster he takes them on as he half-heartedly attempts a boxing comeback. By "chance" (due to the somewhat implausible horse side-plot...hmmm), Dink happens upon meeting his long lost mother, who divorced The Champ many years ago. This sets a trajectory for a tenuous relationship between the characters, as The Champ accepts money from his ex-wife and allows her to see Dink in return.

This film has no desire to get the audience feeling down, and you can't help but smile all the way through the end, and then at the end sigh, "awwww". One of the most contrived and heartstring tugging endings of a film I've seen. To be honest, my eyes were rolling.

One thing I to note: there are two scenes of striking visual naturalism, the first of which is when The Champ wakes up in the morning. The camera just follows him around, moving as slightly as needed, as he slowly gets up and does his things. The other instance is when Dink is visiting his mother, and he climbs up onto the roof of her house, the camera is wonderfully unobtrusive here, and I appreciated these two moments as interludes, and for their quite beauty.