Best Picture: "Rocky," 1976

Movie Stats:

Released 1976 (USA)

American, in English

Director – John G. Avildsen

Stars – Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burgess Meredith, Carl Weathers

Plot Summary:

When washed-up, low-level fighter Rocky Balboa (Stallone) is offered a chance to fight against heavyweight champ Apollo Creed (Weathers), he accepts despite his misgivings. Shire co-stars as Rocky’s love interest Adrian Pennino and Meredith as his manager, Mickey Goldmill.

Warnings:

Very minor blue language; the kind of violence you’d expect from a boxing movie.

Bad Stuff:

I know that people tend to love this movie, but I thought it was slow & boring.

There’s a lot of repetitive language in the film, i.e. people being called “bums,” or whenever someone’s being a jerk they backpedal by saying they’re in a “bad mood.” On the one hand, I think that’s fairly true to life. People do often use the same phrases over and over. However, on film I found it very distracting. It felt like lazy writing.

Good Stuff:

I like that Rocky is basically a lovable dumb oaf. He’s very good-hearted and sweet. He’s also aware of his shortcomings. I thought that was nice.

To me, it seemed like a fairly accurate representation of life in a low-income neighborhood. A lot of these people are smart enough to know that what they’ve got isn’t quite what they want and yet not savvy enough to figure a way how to make things better. Take, for example, the character of Adrian’s brother Paulie (played by Burt Young), who is desperate to get away from his meatpacking job but unable to achieve it. Those kinds of details helped to set the tone of the film.

Sweaters. I’m totally serious. I loved all the sweaters in this movie. Especially the snug one with reindeers on it that Rocky wore for Christmas.

The Verdict:

First, let me nerd out and say that I never knew before that Talia Shire (who appeared in both Godfather I and II as Connie Corleone) is the sister of Francis Ford Coppola. That means she’s the aunt of Nicolas Cage and, much to my utter shock, the mom of Jason Schwartzman. I had no idea that Schwartzman was a Coppola!

As for this movie, let’s be honest here. Everyone pretends that this is a boxing movie. It’s really not. This movie is about the love story between Rocky & Adrian. While it’s very sweet, it’s not exactly groundbreaking. Stallone & Shire had great chemistry together, so the story worked. But I wasn’t wowed. I’m not really sure why people love this film so much. Even so, it wasn’t bad. It was more like, “Well, that was okay.” I don’t imagine myself waxing poetic about it at parties any time soon.

I give the movie 3.25 stars.