Grudge Match stars Sylvester Stallone as Henry "Razor" Sharp and Robert De Niro as Billy "The Kid" MacDonnell two former boxing rivals who fought each other twice in the 80s before Henry decided to retire from the ring, now 30 years later a boxing promoter wants to reunite them for one last round which could put a bit of biffo back into their lives.
Grudge Match for the first two thirds of its running time is great fun, a lot of the jokes made me laugh and it had a nice snappy pace to it, Sly and De Niro have great fun making fun of their iconic roles from Rocky and Raging Bull respectively and Alan Arkin just stole the show for me with almost every line he said just making me thinking he was hilarious.
Sadly however the film stumbles big time in the third act when it decides it wants to tug at our heart strings and strive for some emotional resonance and for me this did not work very well at all as that entire section comes right out of left field and has almost nothing to do with anything in the film that came before it.
It was also at this point where I began to feel what I think is the other big problem with this film and that is its simply too long for its own good, there's a great 90 minute comedy in here waiting to come out but instead it's hidden inside a film that's nearly 2 hours long and it shouldn't be, the third act should've simply been the boxing match and nothing else and it's a real shame to say that given how fun those first two thirds are.
But that said I enjoyed this film a lot more than I thought I would and despite some third act stumbles I did have fun and it does what it says on the box so I'll recommend it but with reservations, 3 out of 5.
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