It's nice to see a bit of a scrap on the silver screen, unless it's the awful, recently released Warrior, that is.

What DreamWorks have done with their latest release is quite canny though; they've taken the boxing genre and introduced robots, therefore making it child (well 12A) friendly. And to make it more of a family affair, they've thrown in Hugh Jackman and Evangeline Lilly to keep the adults happy. But is it a knockout combination?

It's the near future and human pugilism is no more. Robots have taken over the sport, but they don't have it all their own way, as they're controlled by humans. One such controller is Charlie Kenton (Jackman).

Charlie used to be a boxer himself, back in the day, but now his life is all about the bot business. Problem is, he's not doing particularly well; he's struggling to get out of a hole of debt, which just keeps getting deeper and deeper as he bets even more money on his fighting robots, only to have them lose.

Then out of the blue, he gets a phone call. Not only has an ex-girlfriend died, but it means the he has custody of the child they had together – Max (Dakota Goyo). This isn't great news for Charlie, as he had no intention of being a dad back then, and even less intention now. Thankfully for him, the sister of his ex is keen to take custody.

There's one caveat however, the sister's husband wants to whisk her off to Italy for some quality time, so strikes a deal with Charlie to look after Max for the summer. Charlie doesn't exactly agree to this out of a sense of duty, he does it for a cool $100,000. That's right, Charlie effectively agrees to sell his own son.

Although Charlie's not one for bonding, he and the kid get along OK. It helps that Max is a huge fan of robots, if not his own dad. On a midnight raid to a scrap heap, Max discovers the parts of an old school robot; a G2 class, specifically made to spar with other bots, called Atom.

Charlie doesn't see anything in the retro bot; ironically, a bit like himself, it's seen better days. But Charlie isn't prepared for the passion his son shows in turning Atom into one helluva fighting machine.

Look into my eyes. You are feeling sleepy. No not 'shutdown', sleepy.

Although the main story itself throws up little in the way of surprises, the relationship between father and son does. It's not often that the father lead is such a reprobate from the off, and even less that he's prepared to sell his offspring for cold, hard cash. Yes they do warm to one another to Disney-esque levels by the end, but that's only to be expected.

Director Shawn Levy, who has had a patchy career to date at best (highlights include the dire remake of The Pink Panther, both Night at the Museum films, and the drab Date Night), but does well in balancing the action sequences with the bots, as well as the developing father and son relationship.

He's help out hugely however by an impressive display by young Goyo, who manages to avoid the usual cutesy cutesy kid performance (for the most part at least), in favour of something more genuine and spunky.

Levy also strikes gold in combining boxing, robots, family feuding/bonding and a peppering of romance all into the one film, making it an entertaining watch for those parents dragged along by their sprogs.

Kudos should be given too for turning what is essentially a much-loved 70's toy (known as Raving Bonkers in the UK, and Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots in the US, which allowed two players to control either a blue or red plastic robot in a yellow ring, who would battle it out to the death i.e. until your opponent's thumb tired of pumping the button, and their bot's head shot off) into a film.

The only criticism is that Atom the robot hasn't much warmth about him, but that may be just down to him being lost in method acting.

It's just a shame that it missed the Summer holidays window, as it would have been a godsend for parents looking for the perfect KO hit for all the family to enjoy.