My Review of "Rocky Balboa

Rocky Balboa came out back in 2006. At the time we didn't think there was going to be another Rocky movie because the last movie kind of ended the series pretty cleanly. I don't know why they thought this would be a great idea but it didn't turn out to be that bad. Like its predecessors, this movie doesn't really have a clean continuity with all of the previous movies. I find that really weird because movies that have sequels usually have some sort of continuity that they follow closely.

This movie starts out different from the rest of the series. Instead of doing a flashback of what happened in the previous movie we realize Rocky is much older. A lot of things have changed in his life. He's living humbly in Philadelphia but Adrian has passed away. As she was the love of his life he visits her grave often. Paulie is of course concerned for Rocky but he can't seem to get Rocky to let go. Rocky doesn't want to let go either.

To make matters worse, Rocky's relationship with his son is very estranged. Even though Rocky makes multiple efforts to reconcile with his son, there is no reciprocation. This is partly a continuation of the previous movie. Rocky's son has big shoes to fill as Rocky has cast a huge shadow over him. I guess his son has some resentment because he doesn't know how to break out of this shadow and live his own life the best he can. I kind of wished that they would pursue this direction a little more but then it wouldn't be a Rocky movie anymore.

Rocky also makes some interesting relationships with old characters from the old neighborhood. It makes me wonder why it took him so long to start building these relationships but it's a movie. There's actually a lot of things in this movie that are a little nonsensical and created purely to help out the end of the movie. I really didn't like how everything gets tidied up so cleanly only for Rocky to start out with his training. That was never a strong suit in the Rocky series.

In a way, this movie mirrors many of the elements of the first movie but not quite to the same level as the first one did. There's so much lore and background of the series that they could have took and built upon but they decided not to use too much of it. I respect them for this. Though, the continuity yet again is very jarring. It's as if they didn't really pay attention when they watched the previous movies. The second movie had an issue with his eye, the fifth movie had issues with brain damage. They gloss over all of those things and then give a man with those conditions in his late 50's a boxing license. It's utterly ridiculous, but the whole series has been consistent with this silliness so you kind of forgive it.

I would also have liked that they played around with is fighting style a little more. At least in the third movie they played around with Rocky having some finesse in his fighting. That was totally ignored in every movie afterwards. The training scene and the big fight are okay. Back in the day when I first watched this movie I was really hyped up for it. I liked the fact that Rocky was this has been old guy that's going to go kick butt. Watching it now I'm a little more indifferent about the whole thing.

Don't get me wrong, this is an entertaining movie and fun for Rocky fans but I wouldn't say that this movie is mind-blowing. It's not even one of the better movies in the series. It is a competent sequel that nobody expected. For them to be able to pull off another sequel this way is simply remarkable.

Overall, I had fun with this movie but there are a lot of faults that I couldn't overlook. Seeing this for the first time might be fun but this is not a repeat viewing. I thought it was competent for what it was and it did it's job.