Review of Rocky Balboa (2006) by Markb. — 06 Feb 2007

What is it about Sylvester Stallone that inspires such vehement bouts of schaudenfraude in otherwise rational people? A fellow contestant on a movie-related TV game show I once appeared on launched into a gleefully profanity-laced tirade about what a 'loser' he thought Stallone was in his late career; Razzie award honcho John Wilson seemed a bit disappointed that Stallone's latest installment in the Rocky saga was actually quite good (and therefore ineligible for Razzie award consideration).

Perhaps it has something to do with even his supporters' general assumption that since his first big success with the original Rocky back in 1976, the size of his ego has ballooned past that of his famous muscles, and that he tends to assume that we're all as interested in him as he is in himself.

(I mean, who wants to hear his recent admission that he gave up sex while filming Rocky Balboa to get the same edge that professional boxers used to similarly abstain in order to give themselves? I don't WANT mental pictures of Stallone pouring ice water down his pants a la Jake La Motta in Raging Bull.

TMI, Sly!) Since Stallone has always seen himself as Rocky and vice versa, and the fortunes of both larger-than-life figures have run parallel, it's not surprising that Stallone's many personal and professional disappointments as of late (an eponymous magazine that only ran 3 issues, a boxing-related reality TV series that was irreparably crippled by the suicide of one of the contestants, the failure of Cop Land to regain him Serious Acting Cred, and the fact that his biggest box office hit in the last 10 years was--gulp!--Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over) undoubtedly spill into this chapter.

The result is that Stallone admirably humbles himself and his character, scaling down from the overblown tendencies of some of the previous chapters and suffusing Rocky Balboa with more tenderness, humanity and heart--the qualities that made Rocky an iconic figure to begin with--than we've seen since he took on Apollo Creed for the very first time so long ago.

In fact, after the sincere but overwrought Rocky II, the entertaining if synthetic III, the fraudulent IV and the completely forgettable V, this is not only the best of the Rocky sequels by far, but the ONLY truly essential one.

Stallone, like Balboa, goes back to the original's roots, remembering that it was a character study first, a love story second and a boxing movie third, and that our emotional investment in the first two was what made the third so effective.

Talia Shire, as now-deceased wife and love of his life Adrian, may not show up here except in photos and flashbacks, but her presence is so powerful that it compares with Hitchcock's Rebecca in terms of characters who absolutely dominate the proceedings while not actually being around to actively participate in them.

(That's why the much-discussed friendship that Rocky develops with a minor character from the first film, played here by Geraldine Hughes, is exactly that: a friendship. No less and no more. Another look at this movie's final scene establishes that.

) Stallone also remembers that the best Rocky movies, like the best Disney animated features and the best James Bond films, feature the best antagonists, and here for the first time since Apollo, Rocky's opponent (Antonio Tarver) is not a cardboard cartoon villain but a complex, multidimensional individual with insecurities and vulnerabilities.

(And let's have no more carping about how unconvincing and improbable the plot device that gets them together in the ring--a computer-simulated fantasy fight--may be. It's no more so than in Numero Uno, and anyway, when you're enjoying the ride this much, why grouse if the ignition initially sputters a little?) It's just one more indication of how much of a joy Rocky Balboa is to watch that the familiar musical theme by Bill Conti (best known in recent years as "Stickman", the Academy Awards conductor that Julia Roberts chewed out onstage for trying to attenuate her acceptance speech, so clearly this represents a comeback for HIM, too) once again elicits genuine excitement and anticipation rather than being an easy punchline.

But then Rocky Balboa is so good at what it's doing that it inspires even those of us who have kept our esthetic distance from Stallone (and with Cobra, Stop or My Mom Will Shoot and Driven on his resume, it's safe to say that this covers nearly all of us at several points) for the first time in easily retrievable memory, to actually want a piece of the Rock.