Enjoyable interactions with funny lines but fails to deliver anything meaningful

Rating: 7/10 (30 January 2011)

Dicky Ecklund (Christian Bale) is "the pride of Lowell, Massachusetts", at least he still believes that. Most people just see him as a crack addict. HBO is making a documentary about him, but "The Fighter" is about his brother, Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and trying to become a champion boxer.
"The Fighter" has a slightly different feel to it than most gritty boxing movies both because of Bale's performance and because of the amount of comedy delivered with all the lines. Lowell is also the type of town that producer Wahlberg grew up in so the characterizations would have been accurate. But it is still exactly like every gritty boxing movie, and although I was relieved it had comedy, it was an awfully strange mix between comedy and drama. They made light of situations that one scene later or earlier they had taken seriously. Any emotional message that they were trying to deliver was lost.
The interactions among all the characters were quite enjoyable, especially between Micky's "MTV" girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams) and his mother and sisters, and between Dicky and his mother. The performances were great with a wonderful quick wit and fairly interesting interactions. "The Fighter" is a good film but it doesn't have the meaning or impact that something like "Million Dollar Baby" (2004) has.