Over the Top (1987)

Over the Top is the semi-famed competitive arm wrestling film that Sylvester Stallone made for The Cannon Group in the late 1980's. While it's not good its 80's cheese makes it watchable, as does trying to solve the mystery of  just what Stallone was trying to accomplish with this film, are we meant to take it straight, is it a self parody? Stallone plays Lincoln Hawk a truck driver and competitive arm wrester who is trying to win the affections of his estranged son Michael (David Mendenhall), a boy who could be anywhere from 10 to 16 it was never clear to me. It starts out as a road movie, then it becomes about a custody dispute with Robert Loggia, and in the end we are at the International Competitive Arm Wresting Championship's in Vegas and their are strong echo's of Rocky. This ridicules film was somehow co-written by two Oscar winning screen writers, Stallone himself (Rocky, 1976) and Striling Sillipahnt (In the Heat of the Night, 1967). That this movie exists just continues to puzzle me. **