Rocky

1976 love story

Rating: 17/20

Plot: The titular boxer, an over-the-hill part-time amateur pugilist and part-time loan shark bruiser, gets the chance of a lifetime when the cocky heavyweight champion of the world challenges him to a match. Balboa balances training and courting Adrian, a shy pet store employee, and prepares physically and mentally for his second chance.

This isn't a movie about just one underdog, the titular one. It's an underdog overdose! It really lays on the resurrection theme pretty thickly from the get-go with the first shot being a painted Christ and the word "resurrection" actually appearing on a sign in the background. I also love how Rocky is later compared to Albert Einstein, Beethoven, and Helen Keller. Which gives me an idea--maybe I'll tackle a Helen Keller boxing movie after I finish writing and directing my sequel to The Diary of Anne Frank. I can't watch Carl Weathers without saying, "You got yourself a stew." But he's good here, convincing as both a boxer and an actual human. He's got pizazz. My favorite bit of acting from any of these movies is Apollo's look in the 14th round after Rocky gets up again. Love Burgess Meredith's Mickey, too, so grizzled. His face is perfect for this part as a guy with 1,000 years of boxing experience. Maybe Stallone should have had his character write the movie to make the boxing parts of it a little more believable. Another thing I respect about this movie is that is that it succeeds with two hearts--the sports story and the love story. You get a brutal 15 rounds of bloody boxing, cracked ribs, blood being spat out, cut eyes, etc., but the movie ends with an "I love you!" The result of the boxing match can barely be heard in the background as Rocky looks for his gal. I really am touched by the whole thing, as manipulative and movie-ish as it is.

But let's talk about Rocky. I'm making my way through the Rocky movies, two-thirds of them for the very first time. It seems that with as much as Rocky gets punched in the head, he should become more and more brain-damaged. I think that's how brains work anyway though admittedly, I am not a scientist. In this first movie, Rocky is so simple and childlike, and Stallone plays the character as mentally challenged. He has conversations about turtle food with himself in the mirror; Tarzan-yells at a dog that I believe is named Butt Kiss; asks, "How do you spell Del Rio?"; says things like "Hey, I won't let that happen no more, about the thumb, you know?"; has trouble opening his locker, something that I see the dumbest 7th graders in the world accomplish daily (OK, to be fair, he does technically get it open, and it's a padlock problem rather than a Rocky's brain problem, but still--it took him a long time to figure it out, right?); greets birds with a "Hey, birds!" that rivals the way Tommy Wiseau's dog greeting (seriously, all bad movie appreciators need to check out The Room) and later compares birds to "candy, like flying candy"; has these goofy arguments with Buddy the driver (Rocky, "I don't like YOUR face" is not a good comeback to "I don't like your face." It really isn't.), a character who says, "I heard retards like the zoo" which made me wonder if the Dead Milkmen were inspired to write a song after seeing this movie; says "I ain't never talked to no door before" which is, if my counting is correct, a triple negative, a line he delivers after needlessly introducing himself as Rocky twice; introduces himself as Rocky to Adrian again on the television because he must have gotten television and radio confused ("Yo, Adrian. . . it's me, Rocky.); impresses girls with the old "Ahh ahh ahh ahh! I just dislocated my finger" trick; asking if he's talking too loud which, most of the time, he really is; delivers a nice "Ehh-yo" cymbal crash after his punchlines; refers to himself as both dumb and a moron; thinks turtles and a gold fish are "rare animals"; explains his Italian Stallion nickname by saying, "I invented that one day when I was making dinner." (By the way, are boxers supposed to give themselves nicknames? That seems amateurish to me.); gets egg all over himself when he drinks his breakfast; says "moo" at one point; asks, "Does it ever snow in here?" which might have been a joke but it's hard to tell sometimes with Rocky; and says Apollo "looks like a big flag."

But as the Rocky story progresses, he sounds more and more intelligent. I don't get it.

It's almost too bad there were sequels. Alone, Rocky is a great feel-good story and piece of Hollywood myth-making. And it teaches the audience a lesson that yes, even a mentally-challenged way-out-of-his prime fighter can lose a boxing match.