Robot Jox review

Robot Jox

I was flipping through TV this morning and came across this movie while passing HBO. It was a movie that came out in 1990 with little fanfare. The movie took nearly three years to film, mainly because one of the studios ran out of money and went bankrupt.

The basic plot of the movie is that a great war between Russia and the US caused enormous damage to the planet, thanks to Nukes. The two Superpowers decide that all out war isn’t the right course of action. (Yeah, after you kill billions of people you see the error of your ways. Smart move Superpowers.)

The two powers fight over land through Giant robot battles. The events are extremely popular on both sides. The pilots of these mecha are called Robot Jox, hence the name of the movie title. The movie is basically a live action anime without a good plot.

The quality of the film goes from being okay to really bad. The giant robots are filmed mostly through stop-motion, and noticed I said mostly. There are times in the film when the robots transform and move around like tanks. This is clearly done through remote-control toys and look really goofy. There is a Godzilla throwback look to the robot battles. Here’s the kicker, there really are only two Robot battles, kind of sucks.

The acting isn’t all that great in this movie, but Gary Graham isn’t that bad as the lead character. Anne-Marie Johnson is horrific in this movie, however she knows how to act because she was good on the show In the Heat of the Night. She gets a few bonus points for showing her bare backside in this movie. Besides bad FX, the movie also suffers from poor editing. The biggest problem is that the movie simply ends without an ending. The movie could have been so much better if the plot-progression was thought out a little bit better. I can say this about the movie; it’s not Leonard Part 6 awful.

Grade D