If you see only one movie about arm wrestling ... : "Over the Top"

It came down to this: I couldn't keep making fun of a movie I had never seen, no matter how easy a target it was.

So it was that I TiVoed one of the sillier Sylvester Stallone movies, which is saying a lot. Really, compared to this, "Tango and Cash" is "Citizen Kane." But in the end, don't you have to see for yourself how Sly pulls off the role of "truck driver estranged from his young son who has to win an arm wrestling tournament to have any hope of keeping custody of the boy?" I smell Oscar!

Made in 1987, after his Rocky-Rambo success apparently made him think audiences would believe anything, "Over the Top" has Stallone playing a guy named Lincoln Hawk -- pause of laughter ... go ahead, get it all out -- a truck driver who hasn't seen his 12-year-old son for several years. He picks up the kid at military school so they can get to know each other, much to the chagrin of the boy's maternal grandfather, scuzzingly played by an overtanned Robert Loggia. As Loggia plots to get the kid back, Sly and Son bond while the truck rolls across the west.

Part of this bonding involves the kid learning of Stallone's arm-wrestling hobby, which Sly hopes to parlay into a big win at some championship in Las Vegas. I have to confess ... I was jealous of how Stallone taught the kid the finer points of competitive arm wrestling. Seriously, it's mental as well as physical, man. My dad never did that for me. Damn you, Dad, damn you!

(And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon ... )

Of course, everything comes to a head in Vegas, with Stallone advancing in the tournament as his kid shows up to say how much he loves him and wants to be with him, not his rich grandpa. But will that be enough for Sly to defeat his hulking arm wrestling nemesis? Oh, the suspense!

If there's an upside to this idiocy, it's the running time -- maybe 90 minutes -- and the cartoonish performances. Stallone is bad even for him, alternating between laid-back trucker and intense arm wrestler. See, you can tell which is which by how he wears his baseball cap. The kid, somebody named David Mendenhall, is super-whiny and annoying, but hey, he's a kid. As for the others, Loggia is slimy, the rival arm wrestler is insane, etc., etc.

The thing is, I'd love to say "over the top" applies to the characters and movie in general. But there's nothing tongue in cheek about this, which makes it a little sad and a lot bad. This isn't surprising considering it's part of the Golan-Globus Stable of Crap. These are the guys who brought you "American Ninja 2" and "Superman IV." But like I said, if I was going to keep bringing it up as a stupid movie, I had to see for myself. That rule, however, has its limits. Hey, would you sit through "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot?" I didn't think so.