Over The Top (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #49 extract: Over The Top (1987)

Over The Top is cheesy, meat-headed nonsense - but, it works. 

With one of the most ridiculously on-the-nose soundtracks ever put together, pulled from the deep, dark recesses of 80s pop rock, Over The Top assumes it needs no real writing or acting: Sly makes faces, the kid moans, and a song tells you how to feel. That's about the depth of the drama. Everything else that this movie is made up of is simple. Firstly there's the American philosophy of ceaseless persistence guided by higher morals being the formula for all redemption and success. How true this is, I won't comment on. Second is just pure, sweaty, bulgy, greasy, bloody, slobbery, slow motion, extreme close-up, squealing, bellowing, moaning, roaring, off-sync V.O, mano-y-mano (literally), aggressive, hyper-macho spectacle. For what it is... it works. Though you'll laugh and roll your eyes, you'll also feel your rectum tighten and twist. And when it does, you'll also have to admit that this works.