Resurrecting the Champ (2007)
Average Rating: 6/10
Reviews Counted: 118
Fresh: 69 | Rotten: 49
While sluggish in spots, Resurrecting the Champ is a sports/newsroom drama elevated by high-caliber performances by Samuel Jackson, Josh Hartnet, and Alan Alda.
Average Rating: 5.4/10
Critic Reviews: 35
Fresh: 16 | Rotten: 19
While sluggish in spots, Resurrecting the Champ is a sports/newsroom drama elevated by high-caliber performances by Samuel Jackson, Josh Hartnet, and Alan Alda.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 29,702
My Rating
Movie Info
Director and co-screenwriter (along with Chris Gerolmo, Allison Burnett, and Michael Bortman) Rod Lurie tells the uplifting tale of a sports writer who almost lost it all before stumbling into the story of a lifetime in this uplifting sports-themed drama starring Josh Hartnett and Samuel L. Jackson. Erik (Hartnett) is a Denver-based sports writer whose prose is dull and whose marriage is failing. Not only is Erik having a difficult time dealing with his stubborn editor Metz (Alan Alda) - who
Cast
-
Samuel L. Jackson
Battling Bob Satterfiel... -
Josh Hartnett
Erik Kernan -
Kathryn Morris
Joyce -
Alan Alda
Metz -
Teri Hatcher
Flak -
David Paymer
Whitely -
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Resurrecting the Champ Trailer & Photos
All Critics (123) | Top Critics (37) | Fresh (70) | Rotten (52) | DVD (9)
Resurrecting the Champ is authentic in its newsroom scenes, and appropriately concerned at how entertainment value trumps diligent reporting.
Top CriticDespite one great performance and an intriguing setup, the work is crippled by another performance that's nowhere near great, and a storyline that makes it impossible to root for the leading man.
The movie itself -- which deals (not very interestingly) with the issue of journalistic integrity and (very predictably) with father-son relationships -- doesn't pack much of a wallop.
While Resurrecting the Champ seems to be just what you expect, it's only when you've let your guard slip that you realize it's hiding something altogether more forceful in its glove.
There's no rule that says a movie must have a likable character at its center, but it helps if a nonlikable central character is at least interesting.
Resurrecting the Champ is enjoyable in the moment -- But it's the complexity of Lurie's moral universe that makes it linger in the mind.
Resurrecting the Champ is a movie I was going to recommend. It was contrived and dopey, but it seemed like pleasant entertainment. Then came the terrible last ten minutes when it casts itself on the rancid junk heap of hokum.
Nothing can wrench this movie from the grip of a saccharine, formulaic script full of plattitudes and divided allegiances.
Reporter's ethics get KO'd in bland boxing tale.
Pardon me for being offended when a flick revolving around the question of journalistic ethics takes so many liberties with the truth simply to spin a tall tale designed to tug on unsuspecting heartstrings.
Even though the melodrama gets ratcheted up at the end, there were plenty of moments I found myself cheering for the Champ.
a contender that doesn't quite take a championship belt.
If only the film had stayed out of the bedroom and in the bowels of the boxing world, this small gem could have been an unqualified knockout.
Resurrecting the Champ is a specialty of director Rod Lurie, a civics lecture disguised as a film.
Success, adulation, temptation, disgrace, redemption -- it's all there, expressed mostly through the predictably non-expressive Hartnett.
A two-star execution of a four-star goal, and is therefore worthy of a viewing.
Slow in the father-son heart to heart parts, Champ brings it all back home in the end with a great story line and saving performances by Jackson, Alda and Hatcher
Like a championship fight, a movie is often reviewed in rounds. This being said, I think I'll go the safe route and call the film a draw.
Audience Reviews for Resurrecting the Champ
Super Reviewer
The film is just a bit ambiguous about how much due dillegence he put in (or should have), but when all signs were leading to gold, I can see where you wouldn't want to stop the speeding train to question certain aspects and coincidences a bit deeper.
This story kept me in my seat and watching Jackson as the punch drunk "champ" was a wondrous view into method acting - all the little mannerisms and especially the somehow energetic shuffle that achingly told of a body that is simply unable to do and go where the brain tells it to.
Super Reviewer
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