Bruise Brubaker (Mr. T) spends his nights as a bouncer at a club owned by his best friend (Dennis Dugan) and his days running a center for at-risk youth.  Bruise is a former Marine drill sergeant who is now determined to make Chicago a better place.  He’s so cool that his name is Bruise and he even has his own theme song, which plays whenever he patrols the streets and alleys of Chicago.  But when it looks like the youth center is going to get closed down unless it can quickly raise some money, Bruise faces the challenge of a lifetime when he enters a competition to prove that he’s the toughest man in the world!

Is Mr. T the toughest man in the world?  I pity the fool who even has to ask.

This made-for-TV movie is exactly what you think it is.  Mr. T barks out his dialogue with his signature growl but he still seems utterly sincere when he orders the kids to say in school and stop trying to mug old men in the alleys.  At first, it seems like Bruise should be able to easily win the Toughest Man competition but it turns out to be tougher than he thought.  There’s an extended sequences in which Bruise tries to learn how to box and it turns out that he’s no Clubber Lang.  There’s also an extended subplot about some broadly-played mobsters who are hoping that can drug Bruise so he’ll lose the contest.

Probably the funniest thing about the movie is the idea that everyone in Chicago would stop what they were doing so that they could gather around the television and watch the Toughest Man contest.  The second funniest thing is Dennis Farina showing up in a small role and reminding us that it takes all types of actors to make a movie.

Mr. T was never a good actor but he was a great personality and that personality is on full display here.  The Toughest Man In The World will make you nostalgic for a more innocent time.