THE TOUGHEST MAN IN THE WORLD

Mr T’s 1984 made for TV vehicle holds some very fond childhood memories for me, so when chancing upon it for five Australian dollar-y-doos in cult video shop, I really had no choice but to shell out and see if it held up to my rose tinted, halcyon day, jumpers for goalposts memories of youth.

The grim reality of these things is that once again it seems like I paid good money to give my childhood a right pasting. Much like watching repeats of Knight Rider or MacGuyver – you suddenly realise that they were pretty ruddy awful and so long as there are a few explosions and a dumbass one liner, you could pretty much please any kid in the 1980’s….actually scratch that - those are the things I’m STILL looking for in a movie, but it’s the preachy moralising that my brain seemed to have erased from history’s annals. MacGuyver in particular, has not weathered well in the storms of age. His overt mullet-y moralising is too much to bear at 8am when I’m eating my toast and trying to come to terms with the world before me. There are of course a few exceptions to the rule. The real stone cold classics of 1980’s television still stand tall over their peers. The A Team and Magnum P.I. for example, both hold up magnificently

As an aside I am still outright, genuinely OFFENDED that some shitty make up advert used the Magnum P.I. theme to advertise their nonsense. It should be a criminal offense. It’s almost as bad as when the 118 telephone company used the A Team theme on their adverts. I was coming home from work on the bus one day and some ignorant pre pubescent lout referred to the A Team theme as ‘the 118 music’. And did his parents correct him of this artless, ill informed gaffe? No they did not; And therefore it must have been a conscious effort on their part, to raise their child as a cretin; and that ladies and gentlemen is the World that you and I are living in at this very moment.  Please feel free to take a second to wallow in the abject horror of that thought.

Now… on to The Toughest Man In The World. Mr T stars as the fantastically named Bruise Brubaker. Ex Vietman Vet, Security Guard and Youth Worker. He helps kids at a local youth club, carries a torch for a hot young lawyer and tries to hide his secret shame of adult illiteracy. It soon transpires that the local Youth Club is to be shut down, and the only way to raise the funds to save it is for Bruise to win the Toughest Man In The World competition. Cue a bunch of Rocky rip –off training montages as Bruise trains hard in order to compete and beat the reigning champion, and villain of the piece, the stupendously named Tanker Weams!! Now my aged memory was clearly playing tricks on me when I sat down to watch this, as about half way through when Bruise competes in the Toughest man HEATS (note: not the actual finals), there is a triumphant sequence that I would have SWORN was the finale of the movie! Ah well they do say the mind is the first thing to go, and rather that than the bladder.

The Toughest Man competition itself is a weird sort of weightlifting and obstacle course combo that looks quite generic to the sophisticated, new millennium, post-Krypton Factor and Gladiators sensibilities of the likes of you and I; but back in those heady days of 1984 it must have looked like the ultimate of all tests. Anyway Bruise wins and therefore has the right to take on the aforementioned Tanker Weams. The movie then descends into some gangster shenanigans as Bruise tries to extricate one of the youth clubs bad (but good at heart) kids from the clutches of the local mob. It all ends with a big warehouse fight where Bruise defeats Tanker. But surely, this being a warehouse fight and all, this defeat would be unofficial. Bruise would not win the prize money for duffing up Tanker in a dodgy Chicago warehouse. Not unless TheToughest Man In The World contest wanted its public to lose all respect for it as in institution. I mean what about ticket sales and merchandising for a start. Imagine all the excited kids who turn up to the arena on the day, only to be told that unbeknownst to them Bruise had already won the title in an unscheduled downtown smackdown. I really don’t think they thought this through properly!

In any case, as you may be able to tell, this movie is not without its charm. Some fond memories did indeed flood back, and for an unashamed A Team and Mr T fan, this is worth a watch. Let’s face it, it was probably better left to my memories, and it clearly is not the movie I remembered it to be. The A Team, and Mr T in particular, was my ABSOLUTE favourite as a kid. And frankly I’m still as big of a Mr T fan now as I was when I was 8 years old so I’m gonna let all that slide!

IMDB – The Toughest Man In The World