The Champ

The title character, played by Wallace Beery, is an alcoholic swine and a derelict father to a little pie-faced loud-mouth hoodlum. Truth be told, these two annoying sewer peasants probably deserve each other. Their melodramatic tale plays out rather predictably, aping tear-jerking scenes from better fare like The Kid and defying just how much story can be squeezed from the same desiccated lemon of a script. Still, it's perfectly watchable if you're in the right mood for this sort of shit.

No bad scenes, no great scenes. Perfectly middling tear-jerker.

Viewed July 22, 2020.

A big career moment for both Beery and Cooper, to be sure, and they're both quite good... at acting out what even at the time was clearly a thoroughly hokey contrivance of a movie. A popular one, and effective enough... but oh dear is it hokey. Personally, it's appealing enough when they're trying to be cute, but the more cheesy old appeals to sentimentality Frances Marion heaps on, the more keenly aware I am that I am yet to catch a single one of Cooper's sniffles.

The champ? This guy kinda seemed like a chump??

A major tearjerker, a minor divertment. Fine, as everything seems to be an excuse for both main actors to get at one's gut.

It's a real charmer of a movie with Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper stealing every scene with their naive approach to life. Beery, the father, is an uneducated alcoholic who's one talent was boxing, being a washed-up ex-champ, but now just trying to get by. Cooper is the son, an almost miniature image of his dad having to follow him as his dad goes around getting drunk and gambles. It's a beautiful story where they let the guys have time to develop and express their character in each scene.