The Champ (1931)
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The Champ Movie Review
The Champ is a 1931 drama film starring Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper. This Oscar nominee is overall an okay film, but it’s way too sentimental for its own good.
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“The Champ and I ain’t fixed up swell as this,
but our joint’s more lively“
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It tells the story of a washed-up alcoholic boxer attempting to put his life back together for the sake of his young son. Obviously, this kind of story has its endearing moments and is overall serviceable and especially well acted. Although strong for its time, I find it dated today as it doesn’t have that timeless quality to it.
Wallace Beery is very good in the main role and mostly very likable. He gave a reliably strong performance, but was typecast for sure. Jackie Cooper here is actually better than he was in ‘Skippy’. His overly mature talk bothered me at times, but he was cute in many scenes and he gave a terrific performances for such a young age.
The Champ starts pretty good and it has some great moments in the second act, but the third act is simply mediocre. It’s overly melodramatic and just that ending was hard to swallow how ridiculously tragic and emotionally manipulative it was. I really wasn’t a fan of it and it ruined the entire film for me.
But other than that, even though the film is so well shot and particularly well acted, the script itself is pretty weak, slight and simplistic. There is nothing more to this story as it remains pretty much what you would imagine when reading the premise. King Vidor is the most to blame. He usually made great films, but here he let me down as this is easily one of his weakest, most overrated movies.
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The Champ was actually nominated for four Academy Awards and I personally cannot understand either one of its nominations. Well, Wallace Beery definitely deserved to be nominated, but not to win at all. He tied with Fredric March and that ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ performance is simply too superior. The win for best story is simply ludicrous as the story is overly simple and familiar and the nominations for both Picture and Director are also ridiculous. Again, this is an okay film, but far from the year’s finest efforts.
The Champ is one of King Vidor’s weakest efforts. It’s very well acted by both Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper and it has its sweet moments, but the story is overly simplistic and familiar, the third act is way too sentimental and the movie simply did not deserve its four Academy Award nominations.
