Motion Picture Magic: Rocky Balboa

(There's an update to this post at the bottom, because I stupidly left out Rocky II when I listed the Rocky movies in my order of preference. Good catch by Judd.)

After watching Rambo, the latest installment of the Rambo series, I was inspired to watch other works by Sylvester Stallone, and naturally decided to revisit the Rocky series. And so began a grueling trial of 5 Rocky films, including Rocky I, Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV, and the latest film, as well as the subject of this post, Rocky Balboa (Notice how I casually skipped Rocky V, I'm not even gonna dignify it with a hyperlink). If I had to give each film a rating, I would agree with most of the ratings Stallone gives. I laughed so hard at the reason Rocky IV gets a 7.5: "lots of montage." If anything montage makes a film exponentially better, not worse, Sly! At least that's how it is in my world... But more on that some other time. Gotta love the zero for Rocky V as well (Stallone tells it like it is). Ranking the Rocky movies from best to worst, I'd have to go with I, Balboa, III, II, then IV, and V doesn't get a ranking (because it's obvious what it should be).

Now some of you might be looking at that and being like, "WTF, you have Balboa before IV?! And III before IV?!" The answer is a definitive, "You should actually try watching IV as a serious movie, beyond 'Rocky fights a 'roid ragin' Russian robot' (Alliteration, yes!). Not only is the first half of the movie absolutely ridiculous (with the robot and the pseudo life-partner relationship between Rocky and Apollo), but there is a grand total of 5 montages. Five! In one movie! (Now that's nowhere near Transformers: the Animated Movie's grand total of 10 montages, but still, that was a movie about toys. Incidentally, Vince DiCola does the soundtrack for Rocky IV, the same guy who did the soundtrack for Transformers! If you watch both movies, it's so obvious). Listing off the montages we have: Introduction montage (a staple of all Rocky movies), "Apollo dies then Rocky goes driving" montage, Training montage 1, Training montage 2, and final fight montage. Seriously. WTF. 2 training montages? A montage is basically like director saying "OK a lot of shit happens, but we don't wanna show it all, so here's a musical treat!" But I still love them.

Rocky III is also vastly underrated, (even though Mr. T's performance is as crappy as advertised) but it still tells a very good story about Rocky's heart and determination. which is really what the Rocky movies are about. Plus there's the strikingly overt gay undertones between Rocky and Apollo during their training sequence (look at how Apollo looks at Rocky's butt as they're doing the dance-training thing). That and the freeze-frame ending is priceless. But anyway, back to Balboa.

Other than Rocky I, I think that Rocky Balboa is far and away the best of the Rocky series. Stallone really brings Rocky to life one more time, and his character portrayal is his best performance since Rocky I. You really feel as if this is the real Rocky, some 30 odd years later after his first fight with Apollo. Honestly, I think you could just skip from Rocky I to Rocky Balboa and not miss a beat, Stallone-wise. Sure you'd have a few character gaps, but Stallone's performance is so good that you'd just assume they're just plot fillers. The rest of the actors also performed extremely well, with Antonio Tarver pulling off an excellent Mason Dixon, and Milo Ventimiglia giving us a believable Robert Balboa, Rocky's son.

In addition to the good acting performances, the movie has an excellent message and theme. Really, the entire Rocky series is so moving because of its thematics, with Rocky being the dumb, good-hearted fighter with the unbreakable will. I especially love the line "...it ain't 'bout how hard you hit; it's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward." I think Rocky I and Balboa should be required viewing for all kids 10 and older. It really teaches you to suck it up and keep going forward despite impossible odds against you. Rocky is really really stupid (he says his wife died of "woman cancer."), but he also shows that you can be dumb, but still have self-respect, and that you can be given nothing and still make yourself into something.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5

I leave you with the best part of the film, the intro to the training sequence. Watch it; it will change your life. "Let's start buildin' some hurtin' bombs!"

Update: Rocky II definitely is the 2nd worst Rocky film for me (I don't count V as a Rocky film), because there's very little depth beyond the plot. Sure it accomplishes its purpose in Rocky winning the title from Apollo, Adrian freaking out because Rocky gets the crap kicked out of him in every fight, and everyone in the world making fun of Rocky because he's an idiot. But, it really doesn't bring much more out of the characters, and seriously makes me want to kill a couple of them (Apollo and Adrian both have a couple "omg just stfu" scenes). A decent film, but I definitely liked III better.