7 February 2007

Rocky Balboa

Smackers, Il Diablo and I went to see Rocky Balboa in the weekend. Yes this was a masochistic thing to do. The storyline: Rocky comes back 'one last time' (again?!) as a result of a computer simulation of him vs the current champ.
We went expecting crap. Luckily we weren't disappointed. Stallone tried to act. This led to one of the most painful hours in recent movie watching history. He looks tortured, the audience felt tortured. There's meaningless character development - a love interest that goes no-where. Rocky is still mourning the loss of his wife, we know this as every few minutes we see Rocky sitting next to her grave. He is ACTING. His son isn't a chip off the ol block, instead is some vaguely corporate guy. The love interests son is also involved. All of which is done to show Rocky is A GOOD GUY. I really don't want to shout, but the scripting was, so in the interests of accurate delivery, so am I.

All of this meanders through with more acting, more unexplored character development (none of these characters actually do anything in the movie). Until we get to the fight buildup once Rocky has signed on to fight the champ.

Woohoo, we get a montage (cue either Rocky music, or Team America song, your call). Yes its a predicatble montage, but its a montage. It has thumping music. Go Rocky.
The fight itself is good. Ok nowhere near as good as Raging Bull, but then again comparing Scorsese/deNiro to Stallone isn't a wise move.
The first section is crap. The fight section is great. Wait for DVD and skip to the montage :-)
Rating: 2/5 - this is a bit generous, but the fight is good (full ESPN stuff), it has a cameo by Mike Tyson, and there *is* a montage.

Me.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would give it another 1/2 point, based purely on the cameos, the fight, and the strength of the montage. Any training sequence that shows someone using kettlebells, squatting, and clean and jerks, deserves some kudos.

Smackers