Roocky Balboa

Sixteen years later, and I hope people wanted to follow up with Rocky’s life… and the numbers would say, yes they did.

We start this movie with extended amount of continuity referencing. Which sort of works for me because I’ve just been watching these movies, but on the other hand I don’t need reminding. Hopefully people who saw this did want reminding because there is certainly a lot of recapping of events going on. Rocky has a new place of work (unfortunately, he never recommends the rye or the kaiser), but the allure of boxing is still there. And like in the third movie, another would be champ wants a chance to fight him. The movie doesn’t pretend that Rocky will win, but we still get the montage and an extended fight sequence (although only 10 rounds now). And throughout it all Rocky remains upbeat.

This film is part nostalgia, part highlights of previous movies. While it is nice to catch up, I’m not really sure we needed to revisit him. His story was told in the previous five movies, and this isn’t adding much. Stallone still gives a good performance, but this comfy shoes territory.

Hopefully Creed will mix this up a bit. If we must go back, let’s go somewhere new.

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