You would think a title like Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World (henceforth just Big George Foreman) would capture the attention of a fan of boxing and its history.  In point of fact, it did, and not just because of the ridiculously long title.  Unfortunately, it came out the same weekend as Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.  For whatever reason, the story told to little girls to let them know that it is okay to be feminine was getting more publicity.  I guess everyone forgot about Big George Foreman, no matter how many fat burning grills he sold.  And he sold quite a lot of them, if the numbers in the film are to be believed.  Actually, thinking about that chapter in George Foreman’s (Khris Davis) life got me to wondering how many people realized he had once been a professional boxer.  To many, I would guess, his name is simply a label on a kitchen appliance.  Yet, there was a time when he was the most feared boxer in the world.  How does he get from point A to point B?

When Big George Foreman was little (Kei Rawlins), he was still big.  He stands out from his brothers and sister, as their nearly destitute family moves them into a humble home with their single mother, Nancy Foreman (Sonja Sohn).  To illustrate this point, you seem them split a hamburger between the five of them, though George complains of still being hungry.  They laugh it off, but Nancy sends her son to school the next morning with a warning not to get into any fights.  He lasts until lunch when one of his peers, seeing that he has nothing to eat, starts calling him “poor man” instead of his real last name.  This lasts until young adulthood, with him and a friend attempting to mug a drunk guy coming out of a bar.  When it turns out to be a police officer, they run, and George gets away by smearing himself with feces to get the dogs off his scent.  Walking back through town in such a state, he notices a television ad for the Job Corps, a government program designed to teach young people a vocation.  Though he is dedicated to succeeding, if for no other reason than to make his mother proud, he gets into trouble once more when a fellow student steals his shoes.  George is caught holding the culprit out of the window by Doc Broadus (Forest Whitaker), one the people in charge of the Job Corps site.  He is about to kick George out, but the young man convinces Doc otherwise.  Instead, in order to channel George’s evident anger, Doc teaches the future heavyweight champion how to box.  The more George gives to the sport, the more he becomes interested in making it a career.  He sees it as an opportunity to gain all the things that he did not have, and he wants it sooner than the drawn-out process Doc lays out for him.  Thus, with some misgivings from Nancy, the native Texan George moves to California to train full time with Doc.  From here, we see George win the gold medal in his class for boxing at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, though his holding up of the American flag after his victory brings the ire of his peers back home.  Nonetheless, this is what he needs to become a professional, and soon he takes down Joe Frazier (Carlos Takam) for the championship belt.  With success, though, comes a number of temptations, such as cheating on his wife, Paula (Shein Mompremier), in the immediate aftermath of his victory.  She figures this out when he has a family gathering and he will not look her in the eye.  The other woman calling the house does not help.  It is also at this time that he makes the decision of letting his friend from the Job Corps, Desmond (John Magaro), handle all his finances.  With all this going on, he goes to Kinshasa, Zaire, to defend his title against the loud-mouthed Muhammad Ali (Sullivan Jones).  The things Ali says about George enrage him, but the current champ is eventually unseated.  There follows a series of rather embarrassing displays in the ring before George is defeated once again, this time by Jimmy Young (David Jite).  Post-bout, while in the locker room, George passes out, falling to the floor.  In the black of unconsciousness, you hear him say that he wants to live.  He credits this as Jesus coming alive in him, and George vows to never again box.  Instead, much to the delight of Nancy, and Doc’s horror, he decides to become a preacher.  In doing so, he makes peace with people like Paula and Ali, before committing fully to spreading the Gospel.  He also opens up his own church.  Further, when he sees the grandson of one of the women in his congregation on television for being arrested, something he feels he could have stopped, he decides to establish a community center.  Things are going well until one day the lights go out in the gym, and he finds out that Desmond had squandered all his millions on bad investments.  George’s solution is to get back into the ring, despite being in his forties.  His new wife, Mary Joan (Jasmine Matthews), has a vision she credits as being from God of George eventually becoming the champ a second time.  This is what happens when he defeats Michael Moorer (Charles Brewer Jr.), doing so at the age of forty-five.  Between this, and that little “grill deal,” he is now able to carry on with the rest of his successful life.

One of the key questions in Big George Foreman is: what constitutes a miracle?  Is it making it out of extreme poverty to have everything you could ever want?  Is it praying for somebody to make it through a medical procedure and witnessing that happen?  Is it hearing the voice of God at the moment you are about to die?  Is it receiving a vision so clear that it has the finger of destiny upon it?  Is it trusting in God that everything will work out according to His will?  This last question is where George lands at the end of the film.  The answer to all these questions is, nonetheless, yes, though much of it depends on you.  More specifically, it takes a relationship with God for any of these to be called what they are, which is Divine intervention.  George spends much of the run time of the film far from God, not because He is absent from the boxer’s life, but because George is refusing to acknowledge Him.  This attitude comes to a point when Nancy tells George to be thankful to God for what the fighter achieved in the ring.  Instead, George says that God had nothing to do with it, that it all came from his fists.  This is a classic case of hubris.  The dictionary will give you a bland definition of this word, telling you that it is simply “excessive pride.”  As is often useful, the original Greek gives you a better idea of the word as it relates to defiance of the gods.  George had been reaching for the material things that had been denied him as a child, thinking that would bring him respect.  What he realizes after all his trials is that he had everything he needed the whole time.  When we talk about miracles, the common perception involves some kind of mighty act, with beams and trumpets from Heaven.  Yet, they happen every day and this movie is a testament to this fact.

I want to like Big George Foreman more than I do, and the mixed feelings I have about it have nothing to do with my preference for Ali.  The main problem with the film is that it is a pretty straight forward story with little nuance.  It is a great one, to be sure, but it is told blandly.  There also appears to be some liberties taken with the history, despite the matching of the actors to their real-life counterparts as the credits begin to roll.  In sum, it is a bit mediocre.