Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World Parent Guide

Even as a boy, George Foreman (Khris Davis) had a problem controlling his temper. As a young adult, it’s getting him into trouble. After a close scrape with the police, George realizes he needs to find a more stable source of income than mugging drunks in the alleys around bars. He signs up for the Job Corps, a residential program that promises to teach him the skills he needs to find gainful employment. Which it does – just not in the way he expected. After getting into a fight with one of the other students, George is nearly kicked out of the program until Doc Broadus (Forrest Whitaker) intervenes. Doc is one of the supervisors at the Job Corps, and he’s been teaching the young men boxing. George can hit like a train, but he needs to learn that both boxing and life are about more than throwing a big punch.

The problem with critiquing movies as lethally dull as Big George Foreman is that I have to go home and relive them in order to write the review. Stewing in microwaved boredom for another hour or so does nothing to improve my mood or opinion of the film. I just want to set about forgetting everything I saw as quickly as possible, but I suppose that’s why I get paid to do this. The real tragedy is that George Foreman led a remarkable life which definitely could be made into an interesting film: This just isn’t that film.

Dullness is far from this movie’s only sin. It feels somehow even longer than its cartoonishly lengthy title, which is remarkable for a movie with a two-hour runtime. I checked my watch no fewer than nine times, which isn’t a record but isn’t a good sign, either. Unfortunately, every line of dialogue in this film is either a ninth-grade writing exercise or a cliché so overused your brain barely even registers it as human speech. And, despite the long journey, the film doesn’t really know what it wants to get out of this story. It just plods thoughtlessly through the highlights of Foreman’s biography and provides both less information and entertainment than you could get by skimming his Wikipedia page.

Parents who are using this as a sleep aid for their teens (I can think of no other viewing purpose) might be relieved to know that there’s not much for them to be concerned about. There’s no on-screen sex or nudity, although there are references to adultery, and a little bit of drinking and smoking. Violence is limited to a few street fights and boxing matches, and there’s no profanity to speak of. But even with a relatively clean bill of health, this movie is significantly less than the sum of its bland and stale components.