Over the Top

1987 arm-wrestling epic

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Estranged truckdriving father Lincoln Hawk tries to reconnect with his son after his ex-wife's death. His father-in-law is against the idea, and his son doesn't like the idea either. Hawk wins his son over after impressing him with his arm-wrestling prowess.

Pow! I saw this movie in the dilapidated movie theater in Brazil, Indiana, as a middle school student, and I thought it was pretty stupid back then, and I was a pretty stupid kid in 1987, the type of kid who still thought the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi made perfect sense. It's your standard father/son road trip movie sprinkled with the arm-wrestling scenes, scenes that seem to be there only so Stallone can show off his guns. Then, the truck crashes into a mansion, and you realize what a stupid story you're watching and, at least at the age of thirty-nine, start to doubt your decision-making abilities. I've been a busy guy the last few months, and I just haven't had the time to watch as many movies as I'd like. So I get a little free time and watch Over the Top? This movie reminds me of just how bad I always was at arm-wrestling. This movie came out and made a very tiny splash, but it was enough of one to get kids to start arm-wrestling each other. We'd all try the little wrist twist thing that Stallone uses in this, but I'm not sure it ever did anything. Neither did putting our baseball caps on backwards. I'm really glad that was explained in this movie, by the way, or I would have lost sleep. I had little twigs for arms, and even girls would beat me although I had trouble focusing because the physical contact with a female made me giddy. I'm surprised Stallone's character didn't have the same issues because most of his opponents are real lookers. A handful of them are interesting characters who aren't given a chance to shine and add a little personality to this drab movie. One of the main issues is that arm-wrestling isn't really all that interesting, even in a Hollywood motion picture where you have some white-knucklin' edge-of-yo'-seat back-and-forth action. It's a lot of slow-motion grunting and despair. The biggest issue with the movie is the kid. He's played terribly by David Mendenhall, an actual kid, and although the acting is as terrible as you'd normally expect from a kid, the main problem actually has more to do with the writing. Basically, the kid comes across like a real asshole. He flees across traffic on a highway in an effort to escape, says, "I hate you!" a few too many times, and grows to like Lincoln Hawk a little too quickly. But Mendenhall doesn't help matters. I mean, if you can't look effectively disgusted after Sylvester Stallone says, "Would you like to use my shoulder for a pillow?" then you're just not an actor. This movie doesn't know how to develop a story or its characters and instead leans on a bunch of montages. I thought one song during an early montage was the worst thing I'd ever heard in my life, but then I heard another song that might have been worse. It was like Eddie Money and Frank Stallone, the latter who I bet is related to the star of this movie, were having some kind of competition to see who could make my ears bleed most. So many montages though. I think one montage even contained its own montage.

Jennifer's Birthday Movie Celebration: First Blood

1982 action movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A Vietnam War veteran travels to Oregon to visit a friend and finds that he's not as alive as he used to be. While looking for a place to eat, he's bullied by a brutish sheriff and eventually arrested for, I think, having a flag on his jacket. He escapes and retreats to the woods where he's hunted by some police officers who haven't realized what a badass he is.

Seriously, what's wrong with having a flag on your jacket? That's what seems to bug Dennehy initially although that character was probably just looking for an excuse to screw with Rambo. And I think that's the lesson here--you don't screw with the mentally ill. Cause if you do, you'll end up with a knife against your throat or your gas stations on fire. I don't know what to make of Stallone's performance here. The performance is fine for this sort of action/adventure thing, and Stallone, as evidenced in Rocky, can pull off mentally challenged very well. He does a lot of grunting in this movie and really seems more animal than human, something I probably already suspected anyway. He's physically perfect, and the action scenes in the forest with ubiquitous Rambo injuring the silver-hatted (or was the color messed up on my television?) cops are great in the way they build suspense. An earlier escape scene's fights are lame by comparison with cops who don't flail very well, especially goofy David Caruso who can't even get kneed in the junk right. When Stallone actually has to act like a human being, he's less realistic, and the dialogue ending with "I can't find your legs" made me laugh, probably inappropriately. The smaller roles are played laughably. Jack Starrett as Galt makes a run at Silliest Actor in First Blood early with the delivery of "If you don't fly this thing right, I swear I'm gonna kill you" but then you've got John McLiam (Boss Keen in Cool Hand Luke) as "Orvil, Guy with Dogs" who's got a voice like a Dukes of Hazzard extra. Leroy the painter, by the way, would easily win Silliest Actor in First Blood but it's an uncredited performance which unfortunately makes him ineligible. Both of the hunters are pretty bad, too. "What happened, son?" "I see him over there!" I think these guys must have been related to Ted Kotcheff or something. But there are good performances as well. Richard Crenna was born to say "To eat things that would make a billy goat puke" and is the perfect Trautman in this, and Brian Dennehy is always entertaining. And some guy named Dan Hill should receive a lifetime ban from recording studios for that "It's a Long Road" song that plays during the credits. I'd rather piss off Rambo than have to hear that again.

This was watched in honor of Jen's birthday. She's got a thing for Brian Dennehy.

Rocky V

1990 sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a sequel

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Rocky's gotten too old to punch people anymore. He's also run into a little bit of money trouble after a crooked accountant robs him. It's back to the crappy part of Philadelphia for poor Rocky and his family. Things look grim until he meets a young boxer who he decides to train for the heavyweight crown. Meanwhile, Rocky's son Rocky Jr. starts to feel alienated and becomes cinema's first goth kid. Mickey's still dead. Creed's still dead. Read this plot summary with a rock anthem behind it, and you've got yourself a montage!

Say what you want about the idiotic Rocky IV, but this one is just dull. The title crawl from the right is thankfully back, and we get to see a big ridiculous chunk of that bout with Drago where the commies decide to change their wicked ways and root for the guy with the red, white, and blue boxing trunks. And then you get to see a naked Stallone. Fantastic. Drago must have hit Rocky pretty hard, by the way. That or Stallone just flubs up his lines. Half of what he says in those first couple movies seems to be "Adrian! Adrian!" and at the beginning of his movie, after that pounding from Drago, he actually calls his wife Mick. He also tells his wife that "Maybe [he] should take [her] upstairs and violate [her] like a parking meter" which is probably not something you should say in front of your son. Speaking of his son, played by Sylvester Stallone's actual son Sage Stallone, he seems to have just as much acting talent as his dad. He acts as well as you'd expect a guy named Sage to act. All the scenes featuring children in this movie are pretty painful, and the hip hop score doesn't help. The dirty goth kid running off after Rocky Jr. beats up his friend ("I didn't like him anyway!") is pretty cool though. It's almost like Stallone wrote for these young characters without having ever been a child himself. And when his son starts rebelling, illustrated by his earring and his use of double negatives? It just so simpleminded. But back to the father. There's an entire conversation that Rocky has with Rocky Jr. where the former barely seems like he can speak English. He's back to the braindead Rocky of the first movie! Later, he wears a sweatshirt that rivals that tiger jacket in Rocky II for pure awesomeness. Oh, and Rocky has learned magic. He pulls things from about fifteen different ears in this movie which I think might somehow be how Mike Tyson got the idea to eat Evander Holyfield. I can't explain it here because I don't have time, but I have a few charts and diagrams to explain it all.

But I'm really making this movie sound better than it actually is. Sage Stallone isn't even the worst actor here. No, that dishonor goes to Tommy Morrison as Tommy "Machine" Gunn, a character whom I could not have possibly cared less about. He does look like a heavyweight boxer, maybe a little more realistic than Mr. T. or even Drago, but he's the least interesting antagonist in the series by far, and Morrison's acting abilities are dreadful. I did like the Don King character played by Richard Gant who would later play a character who couldn't find The Dude's Creedence tape. And Mickey's back from the dead, spitting all over the champion with his zombie spit. Ok, so it's not an undead Mickey. No, that'll probably happen in Rocky VII.

The real problem with this movie is the ending. Like the other movies, this builds to a climactic fight between Rocky and the antagonist, but this is a wild no-rules street brawl. "My ring is the streets!" What the hell is the lesson supposed to be here? I can't believe this is the way Stallone wanted to end things with this character ("Yo, Adrian! I did it! I beat up some thug in the street which actually doesn't, you know, solve any of our problems at all!") and the trumpety theme music almost seems blasphemous after some experimental flashback weirdness and that idiot son of his saying, "Knock the bum out! He took my room!" So stupid. And I think George Lucas ripped off dialogue from this for his fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan. "You and me was supposed to be brothers. I loved you." I think Obi-Wan says that verbatim in Revenge of the Sith.

This movie was almost no fun at all. Rocky movies aren't supposed to depress me! One more to go, and I can't imagine a movie where Rocky boxes at the age of 90 or whatever is going to be any good.

Rocky IV

1985 propaganda piece

Rating: 10/20

Plot: A powerful Soviet boxer named Drago punches Rocky's friend Apollo Creed to death. Rocky travels to the Soviet Union, a place that once existed, to train and fight the monster.

Monster. Seriously, was I supposed to be rooting against Drago in this movie, and more importantly, does the fact that I really wasn't put me on some kind of Joseph McCarthy list? As pro-America and pro-democracy as this movie is (and believe me, it's as proud to be an American as a guy wearing red, white, and blue boxers at a monster truck rally), there are some mixed messages throughout this. We start with exploding boxing gloves, not the traditional title crawl from the right, and automatically, this does not bode well. Then, you get to Paulie's birthday party where the birthday boy gets a robot. Only in America, right? This was actually the first "Rocky" movie I ever saw, and I remember being confused and bored by all this birthday and robot shit. I probably wondered, just like I did when I watched it this time, if Paulie and the robot were going to have an intimate sex scene. Apollo seemed to think so. The robot is probably a good symbol for what is wrong with America in this movie, but I'm too tired to get my thoughts together on that. I do know that America just seems so cocky and cheap and loud. You get all these flashy shots of a Camaro at the beginning of one of about five thousand montages. Then, you get flamboyant Apollo's entrance before his last tragic match, and you can just tell that James Brown confuses the heck out of Drago. So you get these clashing ideals in the ring--capitalism vs. communism, old (Apollo and his training techniques) vs. new (Drago and all those machines the commies got), a cocky guy who is all style vs. a guy who just wants to freakin' box, pomposity vs. stoicism. And by the way, I prefer Drago's entrance music more than anybody else's in any of these movies. I like movie music that I can play anyway, but that synthesizer/hissing breath thing is just cool. Drago trains really hard, just as hard as Rocky or Apollo, so I'm not sure what the message is supposed to be. And Rocky is chopping down trees for no good reason, so you know the environmentalists (probably, commies anyway) are going to be rooting against him. And then, look at the fight itself. First, you know who's going to win because these movies have gotten predictable. But look at how Rocky wins. He gets lucky during the fight, and he cheats by hitting after the bell, but they try to keep Drago as the bad guy by having him retaliate. I wonder if Rocky had something stuffed in his glove to cut Drago actually. I wouldn't put it past him! There's also a moment in round two where Rocky gets knocked down but doesn't get a count. What the heck? I just don't see how Drago is the villain in all this (aside from a half-second shot of him being injected with something which suggested he's not all-natural), but his hometown crowd does as they start rooting for Rocky at the end which has to be the dumbest thing about any of these Rocky movies. Poor Drago was probably shot like a wounded racehorse after the fight, and after all that hard work, I just felt sorry for the guy. I also feel sorry for anybody with an aversion to movie montages since Rocky IV has to break the record for most in one movie. There are at least seven, and counting the opening sequence which, just like the other sequels, is the end sequence of the previous movie, this has about forty minutes of footage that we've already seen before. It's like they filmed Rocky IV, realized they only had about fifty minutes of movie, and said, "Yeah, we can just pad the rest of this with some of the best moments from the other three movies." This movie, despite being an offensive chunk of propagandist cheese, gets a 10/20 only because you get a formidable foe with Drago (I like Dolph more than Mr. T. and the Hulkster combined actually) and because even though Mickey is dead (he shows up in those montages though), that ring announcer's mustache is alive and well. But overall, this movie should be as embarrassing to America as slavery and the treatment of the Native Americans.

As mentioned, I watched this Rocky before the others. More than likely, this one turned me against the series and kept me from giving the first movie a chance until I was in my late-20s.

One more thing--2,150 pounds per square inch, the most force of one of Drago's punches, I believe. Wouldn't that be enough to completely destroy Rocky's skull or literally tear his head from his neck? That would have been a nice end to the story actually--Adrian catching her husband's head in her lap and Rocky looking up at her and saying, "Yo, Adrian. I guess this is it for old Rocky, huh?" Or just "Adrian! Adrian!" with a cut to Paulie having his way with his robot or Rocky's son, who acts just as well as his dad, crying. That's an even better end to the Balboa story than the one I imagined for Rocky II where a truck hits the boxer and kills him in front of thousands of children.

Rocky III

1982 sequel sequel

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Rocky's now the champion of the world (see Rocky II, or just the beginning of Rocky III since it shows you the end of the second one anyway) and is fighting chumps. A new challenger with a mohawk bursts onto the scene. A blast from Rocky's past comes along to help train him for his big fight. Meanwhile, there are Adrian problems.

This is no worse than the last sequel, but as entertaining as things are--and they are mostly very entertaining--things are really starting to get ridiculous here. I do love the title crawl from the right in these. Iconic. After that, the movie goes downhill, but I'm glad I got to see the end of Rocky II again since I didn't notice blood on the referee the first time. Then, we get not just one montage but two, including an "Eye of the Tiger" montage with a Muppet sighting. The characters are as colorful as the storytelling is formulaic and clumsy. Mickey's in there to deliver his Mickey-isms, my favorite being "You ever fight a dinosaur, kid? They can cause a variety of damage." And there's Mr. T. whose Clubber Lang would be a really cool character if he wasn't just stealing Apollo Creed (love the names in these) dialogue from the other movies--my suspicions, at least--and if there wasn't all that cartoonish grunting. It takes away a little of his presence, I think. The Rocky character seems even less brain-damaged than he did in the first two movies which makes no sense at all. Stallone's writing makes it clear that he might not be all there, however. Adrian seems superfluous all of a sudden, and the less screen time for her, the better. And then there's Hulk Hogan as Thunderlips. What the hell is going on with that match with Thunderlips? And what the hell is he talking about most of the time? Love slaves? Punching cops? Who thought this scene was a good idea? Rocky's screaming of "Adrian!" (of course) and "Catch me!" when Thunderlips is getting ready to throw him into the crowd were funny though. And I didn't realize Hulk Hogan was so huge. Anyway, this is a fun enough little movie, but it's so cartoonish and doesn't have nearly the emotional impact of the others.

And nobody thought taking Mickey to a hospital would be a good idea? What's wrong with these people.

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.

Zookeeper

2011 talking animal and talking Kevin James movie

Rating: 6/20

Plot: The titular zookeeper is really good at his job, but he's not so good at love. Luckily, the animals he's been so good to at the zoo are willing to help him attract the attention of his dream girl. But will he like the guy he has to become in order to make that happen?

I think movies with Kevin James in them are become exponentially painful. This one's got talking zoo animals, ones slightly less humorous than the ones in Madagascar. Nick Nolte's a gorilla, Cher's a girl lion, Sylvester Stallone's a boy lion, and Judd Apatow--a guy with nothing else to do?--is an elephant. Adam Sandler gives one of the most annoying voice performances you'll ever hear, and Don Rickles is a frog. And I know what you're thinking--man, that's quite the collection of comedic geniuses! So you'd think one of them would stop everything during the recording session and give the director a heads-up. "Hey, this isn't very funny at all. And I should know because I'm Sylvester Stallone and/or Cher!" The increasingly ubiquitous (wait a second--not sure something can be increasingly ubiquitous) Ken Jeong's in this, too. Hollywood seems to be doing it's best to find this guy things to do. Same with Kevin James. Look, it seems like he's a nice guy and all, and I don't mind nice guys doing well for themselves. But when King of Queens ended, I just didn't think he had that "it" that would make it possible for him to carry a movie. So it's no surprise that he can't. Hollywood writers just keep giving this guy different jobs (zookeeper, mall cop, mailman, butcher, baker, candlestick maker), throwing a girl (or two) into the script, and hoping a comedy erupts. There's a lot of fat-guy-running-into-things slapstick if that's your bag, but I couldn't find a single laugh in this. And when the zookeeper gets his girl (no, that's not the end; the end is more predictable than that), things get entirely too preposterous. The animal-talking effects look stupid, and there's the most egregious product placement I've ever seen. At one point, the movie's plot steps aside to make room for a T.G.I. Fridays commercial.

Watched this at school with 7th graders. They laughed a couple times, but didn't seem to like it very much either. I didn't have time to get their ratings.

Quick, readers--can you think of a memorable Kevin James moment?

Demolition Man

1993 action movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: It's 1996 and tough-guy copper John Spartan finally catches dangerous criminal Simon Phoenix. He has to break a few cop rules and blow up a bunch of stuff to do it, but he does it. Phoenix is cryogenically frozen. Spartan's cyrogenically frozen, too, because if he wasn't, this wouldn't have enough in common with Austin Powers. Many years later, in a time when society has banished violence, sex, and bad language, Phoenix manages to escape. Reluctantly, they thaw Spartan so that he can team up with Sandra Bullock to once again capture the dangerous criminal.

Denis Leary, who plays mole man Edgar Friendly in this movie: "Demolition Man. . .giant piece of shit."

That might be a little harsh. This is a lot like The Running Man except the action sequences are arguably sillier and more senseless. And probably more explosiony! Bigger-than-life action hero Stallone (see Samurai Spy, the only other Stallone movie I have on this blog) plays the type of character he's supposed to, but he's thrown into a society with new rules that he's not used to and that gives the character a little twist. Like The Running Man, this one is sometimes cleverly satirical. The only surviving restaurant in 20-whatever is Taco Bell, citizens are fined for cursing, Schwartzeneggar is actually the president, and there's a museum with a room devoted to violence to show what past society was like. Wesley Snipes is an adequate baddie, sort of a Dennis Rodman without the tattoos and piercings. Sandra Bullock is as useless as she normally is. There is a Stallone/Bullock sex scene, a really goofy virtual reality thing that might prove that neither Stallone or Bullock have actually climaxed. I had my doubts about them anyway. But despite the occasional humor and clever jabs at society, this ends up being nothing more than your typical sci-fi action flick, action scene piled on action scene piled on Stallone's pecs. It's not always pretty, but it's generally sweaty.

Samurai Spy

1965 Eastern Western

Rating: 12/20

Plot: People in Japan stop getting along, have a war, and then stay mad at each other. A baffling amount of characters with nearly-identical names and indistinguishable wardrobes and personalities show up and prowl and pussyfoot around. They get confused about who they are, probably because they can't tell each other apart because their names and wardrobes are similar, so they backstab each other and then some of them stab in the front, too.

I'm generally a sucker for these samurai flicks. This had more weapon variety than others (flying stars and cute little shapely knives) and mute ninjas and was shot in crisp black and white. Typical of the genre, there were individual shots that were just beautifully structured--weeds blowing in just the right places, clouds and rivers as background characters, snippets of the story told in shadows and fog and slow-motion blades. The fight choreography, however, was really clumsy and lacked the poetry and emotion of superior samurai movies. The plot, driven mostly by long stretches of explanatory dialogue and (at the beginning) a narrator who seemed to be in a hurry, was convoluted and clunky. So many characters (none which I really liked), so many plot twists (none which I really followed), so many clans and place names (none which I could connect with anything). More than likely, a person a little bit smarter than me would have followed this more easily and given it a higher rating.

Trivia:

Apparently this was Sly Stallone's first role. It's uncredited, but you can clearly see that it's him in the picture I took. This would have been a full five years before he played "Stud" in the 1970 masterpiece The Party at Kitty and Stud's. Coincidentally (perhaps!), the subtitle about five seconds after this shot has a character saying, "Give it to me, Stud. Give it all to me. Go ahead, Stud, give me all your juice," just like Kitty in that first Stallone credited role.

Here I am enjoying snacks and watching Samurai Spy: