A Rocky Analysis

The last few weeks there have been a string of Rocky movies shown on TV. I didn’t think much of it but very few people outside of the 007 family have played a character as often as Sylvester Stallone has played the Italian Stallion. Six times Sly put on the boxing shorts to portray his pugilist alter-ego and while many movie geeks like me know them all, I feel some sense of responsibility top my friends to take this opportunity to give you a short synopsis of the movies and whether they are worth watching or not.

ROCKY – The original and possibly the best of the six. A down-and-out Rocky Balboa is given the fairytale opportunity to fight for the World Heavyweight Championship against the reigning champion, Apollo Creed. Rocky is mentally slow (think sloth slow) but is a good natured guy everyone wants to cheer for. The outcome seems inevitable with an underdog beating the established champion, but I won’t ruin it as this was an outstanding movie made for a sequel set-up!

Watchability Factor – Have to see!

ROCKY II – The sequel was nearly as good as the original and was set up to let the once-upon-a-time underdog finish the job and bring home the championship! This sequel is somewhat predictable, but there are a view storylines thrown in to help to make this a fuller sequel than normal. I can guarantee that you will feel good when this movie ends.

Watchability Factor – Have to see this one also!

ROCKY III – Another Sequel that builds on the Rocky legend and shows how a champion’s career can be manipulated to make a less than stellar champion look legendary and then how that champion can overcome not only their place in life, but there lack of confidence once it is shaken. This movie is less dramatic than the first two; however, it is still quite entertaining and would have been a good spot to end the series.

Watchability Factor – Got to see Mr. T!

ROCKY IV – Maybe one of the last great Cold War Era Soviets-against-Americans Movies made. The Italian Stallion takes on the indestructibly juiced-up soviet boxing machine Named Ivan Drago - Terrifying. After the stereotypically named Ivan kills Rocky’s friend, the Stallion heads to Russia to train to challenge the Soviet Threat like every good American should. The final fight scene is okay and includes possibly one of the best Mikhail Gorbachev look-a-likes you’ll ever see. The final fight will get you motivated and you will really think this movie is great until Rocky grabs the microphone after the fight and goes all diplomatic on us. It one of those moments in movies where you can actually find yourself feeling embarrassed for the title character – OOOF! This should have been the end of the series!!!

Watchability Factor – Worth watching at least once.

ROCKY V – HOLY COW I still can’t believe they made this movie. I’ll give you a synopsis because this one is way too painful to watch….READY? Rocky loses all his money and has to go back to the Philly streets, he channels his inner Mickey, finds a young fighter to train, builds said fighter up, loses said fighter to a “Don King” look-a-like, and just when you think you have some idea where this one is going the young fighter comes back to find Rocky and challenge him to a…wait for it…a street fight! This is where Rocky whips the younger fighter and the movie blesses us all with ending.

Watchability Factor – NONE! This is a train-wreck that no one should stop and watch.

ROCKY VI – In the Mid-80s a comedian made a joke about a Rocky movie where the gray-haired Italian Stallion makes a return to whip a 20-something fighter in the ring. Sound a little bit far-fetched? Well apparently not to Hollywood execs since they made it! Storyline – when a video game simulation says that Rocky in his prime could beat the current champ, the current champ challenges a 65ish year-old Rocky to a fight. Don’t waste your time, Rocky wins and then goes through airport security in Australia and gets caught with more performance enhancing drugs than Jose Canseco had in his hey-day…Oh wait a minute; the last part was the real-life portion of it all.

Watchability Factor – VERY LITTLE. If you’re hung over and can’t change the channel I guess.

That’s it for the ROCKY series. Stay tuned for my next analysis.

YO ADRIAN!!!!

Later,

Bill