The sports movie has its own set of tropes and trappings that come as part of the package, and so does the biographical drama, as well as the boxing movie. When you throw all three together and tackle the story of a genuine icon of the discipline with an incredible true story to lean on, then it would be reasonable to expect great things from Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World.
Understandably having its title whittled down to the much less unwieldy Big George Foreman so there was actually room on the posters for other things, director George Tillman Jr.’s deep dive into its titular subject tanked horrendously at the box office after only managing to recoup $6 million of its $32 million budget from theaters.
Critics weren’t exactly won over, either, seeing as the stirring story could only muster an underwhelming 43 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Then again, a 96 percent audience score tells a completely different story, and that popularity among the people who’ve actually gone out of their way to see it has now parlayed into an impressive showing on Netflix.
Per FlixPatrol, Big George Foreman has debuted as the second most-watched feature among subscribers in the United States, and while it doesn’t bring anything new or particularly remarkable to such a well-worn subgenre as the boxing biopic, sometimes ticking every single one of the expected boxes can turn out to be precisely what viewers want.