Unstoppable Parent Guide

All his life, Anthony Robles (Jharrel Jerome) has loved wrestling. He was the national champion in his weight class his senior year, and now he’s looking at colleges. Anthony dreams of the highly successful University of Iowa program – but there’s a catch: Anthony Robles only has one leg. Although neither he, nor his mother Judy (Jennifer Lopez), nor his high school wrestling coach, Bobby (Michael Peña) have let that slow him down, it means almost none of the top-ranked colleges are going to make him any offers. Meanwhile, Anthony needs to continue to survive the harassment from his unpleasant, abrasive, and downright abusive stepfather, Rich (Bobby Cannavale).

Almost all sports movies are, structurally, the same movie. Our plucky hero starts out with some easy wins, loses some big ones to learn humility and discipline, and comes back to win when it counts. Although based on the true story of Anthony Robles, the film manages to stick to the inspiring sports movie script harder than its source sticks people to the mat.

The film does manage to avoid the trap some sports flicks fall into, which is to make their antagonist some kind of homicidal sociopath who should, in any reasonable narrative, be in jail instead of a large arena. This movie already has a perfectly dreadful character in Rich, so Anthony’s wrestling opponents are simply skilled, competitive wrestlers.

The problem with sticking this closely to the established genre tropes is that the movie drags like a two-legged rabbit through a glue trap. The film’s runtime is only about two hours, but it’s so relentlessly familiar that I must have checked my watch 10 times. Family audiences are also going to have issues with the candid depictions of domestic abuse and relatively frequent profanity. Unstoppable should be fine for teen audiences (and Anthony’s example of courage and grit would be good for them), but younger kids should probably go watch Safety or something.

I can’t help but feel like there’s a more interesting way to tell this story, but despite this movie’s flaws, it’s not terrible. It’s just unoriginal, and if you (unlike me) don’t have to watch half of the sports movies that come out every year, you’ll probably get more out of the genuinely incredible achievements of this real-life athlete.