Why 'Over the Top' is a bad movie masterpiece

Sylvester Stallone's 1987 debacle Over the Top has nearly every hallmark of an ideal bad movie. It has great production values serving an unbelievably absurd premise, it's played very earnestly, and has so many jaw dropping shifts in mood and plot that it's hard to believe the filmmakers released it in theaters as a finished product.

In many ways the movie -- which is about a truck driver/professional arm wrestler trying to bond with (and win the custody of) his estranged son -- is the culmination of the Cannon film brand, an infamous company which churned out mostly junk in the 1980s and early-90s.

This shady company's legacy is covered extensively in the terrific documentary Electric Boogaloo. For the company, landing Stallone, who at this point was at his peak as a box office powerhouse, was a boon.

Stallone himself has admitted to signing onto the movie just to collect what was then (and now) an astronomical payday of $12 million. I imagine producers thought they cold bilk audiences into believing this would be essentially a Rocky film with arm wrestling instead of boxing, but needless to say audiences weren't buying it. Over the Top tapped out with just $16 million at the box office,

Today, on Instant Netflix, we can enjoy the film for what it is. And incredibly non-nonsensical and unintentionally hilarious folly. The movie has already inspired a classic episode of the podcast How Did This Get Made? and an amazing, funny fan-made trailer which emphasizes the arguably creepy nature of Stallone's scenes with his fictional son:



After watching this turkey a few times, I believe it deserves a place in the pantheon of bad movies alongside The Room and Showgirls. Almost everything about this movie has a misguided charm -- from Stallone's character's name (Lincoln Hawk (frequently mispronounced as Hawkes)), to the direct-to-camera, documentary-style interviews, which include this gem of a monologue:

But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

There's Stallone's ex-wife, who is dying of some mystery ailment that is never explained and who seems to enjoy a very good relationship with her ex-husband despite the fact she purposely kept their son out of his life, again for reasons that are never explained.

There's Robert Loggia, gleefully chewing scenery as the villain, who is driven by a seemingly irrational hatred of the Stallone character and essentially holds his grandson captive to prove a point.

There's the young boy -- who starts out so pretentious and precocious you want to punch his lights out, and then metastasizes into a whining, weeping softy, whose lights you also want to punch out.

There's Stallone's character who explains little and understands almost nothing. Besides the monologue above, my favorite moment with him in this movie is when he forces his kid to take on a money wager over an arm wrestling match. When his son winds up winning, he calmly inserts "pay up now" amid the celebration, this is GIF-worthy to say the least.

And then there's the last act arm wrestling competition, which has some of the most colorful looking and acting nutjobs you'll ever see in a movie. Again, this all merges into "so terrible its good" territory and unlike a lot of plain old bad movies, it's never boring -- just incredibly ludicrous.

Anyone who enjoys excess and gaping plot holes should do themselves a favor and stream this souffle of ineptitude. It's a reminder of a quaint bygone era, but also a film with more laughs than your average, modern mainstream comedy.