They had low expectations heading in and cared only that it was a watchable family movie featuring a character they loved. For many people, it was one more chance to see a "Rocky" movie in the theaters - either for the first time (if they were younger than 25) or the last time (if they were older than 25), and if they were seeing it with their kids for the first time, even better. You can't underestimate the nostalgia factor here. If "Rocky V" was the crystal meth stripper, then "Rocky Balboa" was the C-plus girlfriend who felt like an A-minus.Ģ. And that's what happened with this last Rocky movie. Maybe she's a C-plus under normal circumstances, but given your uncle's history, she feels like an A-minus and nobody can stop talking about how nice she is. What happens? He shows up with a nice enough girl who's friendly and really seems to like him. and everyone in the family is completely terrified because he's had such horrible taste with women. Then he announces to the family that he's showing up for Christmas with his new girlfriend. It was such a bad experience that he didn't date anyone else for five years and he's been in therapy the entire time. ![]() That's going to artificially skew any opinion, right? I just can't shake the feeling that everyone who liked the movie was inadvertently grading it on a pronounced curve.įor instance, let's say you have an uncle who became involved with a former stripper who cheated on him, became addicted to crystal meth, kept stealing from him and eventually bankrupted him before she was arrested for trying to run him over with a car. Most people were expecting an epic train wreck and ended up being pleasantly surprised (and relieved) that it wasn't an epic train wreck. After that, it's just a nostalgic rehash of the first four movies - familiar training scenes, familiar fight scenes, familiar everything - that works because you could put Bill Conti's music to just about anything and it would be entertaining.ĭoes this mean the movie should have been made? As you'll read in the accompanying collection of "thumbs up" e-mails, there were five reasons why this movie worked, although none of them had to do with the actual quality of the movie:ġ. ![]() The new movie doesn't get going until Rocky agrees to fight Mason Dixon, right after the news conference in Vegas, when Duke suddenly shows up and gives the "We're gonna build some hurtin' bombs!" speech. It's like a poor man's version of "Rocky II," which was my least favorite Rocky movie before the calamitous fifth. Seeing it on the big screen last weekend (and not in a critic's screening room) made the movie a little more palatable, but I still couldn't get past the creepy parallels between Stallone and Rocky (intentional or not), and the first 70 minutes just didn't work for me (too slow, too redundant, too depressing). ******* SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE, STOP READING! ******* My readers were either delighted or mortified by the movie, with no middle ground, and the positive feedback outweighed the negative feedback by a 3-to-1 margin.ĭoes that mean I'm changing my review? Nope. While sifting through nearly 3,500 e-mails relating to "Rocky Balboa" over the past few days, one thing slowly became clear: This was probably the most polarizing sports movie ever made.
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