Well, I went to see Rocky Balboa, and I’ve got ambivalent feelings about it. Being a person who has seen all four of the Rocky movies that count literally dozens of times, I know how the movies are supposed to go. I know the formula, even when there’s not quite supposed to be one. So going in, I pretty much knew what to expect. And really, nothing happened that I wouldn’t have expected. What this movie does is actually put a nice bookend on the series. It matches the original in several ways, which kinda makes me better able to rationalize the tremendous suspensions of disbelief that are required to make it work.
I know what I kept saying before, but during the movie, I stopped wanting him to die. I woudln’t have been able to tolerate it if Rocky had won, but I wasn’t really ready for him to die, either. The way it turned out literally streched my credulity to its edge, but it was acceptable. I think what did it was that Rocky was always a very likable character to me. That didn’t change in this movie. He’s just a hard dude to root against. Mason Dixon, on the other hand (one of the worst movie names of all time) is hard to deal with. At times, he comes across as someone who needs guidance. At other times, he comes across as this arrogant punk who needs Rocky to lay him low one time. It doesn’t quite work.
In a way, I think that’s about how it is for the whole movie: it doesn’t quite work. It makes sense on some level, but noooot quite. Like I said before, Rocky Balboa as all-time great heavyweight fighter doesn’t really make sense. Rocky was very popular, but he was never really great. Mason Dixon vs. Apollo Creed on a computer would have made much more sense, but then with Apollo being dead and all, there wouldn’t have been much of a movie for us to watch. Likewise, taken out of sequence with the other movies, this movie kinda makes some sense, but not exactly. The common sentiment is that Rocky V never happened, and Rocky Balboa accepts that, at least to a limited degree. Rocky really did lose his money, but all that business about the brain damage and hearing the angels and whatnot? Nuh-uh. He’s in fine fightin’ shape. Which I suppose I can accept, but for the sake of the continuity of the series, I would have at least liked some type of explanation about the medical aspects of Rocky fighting again. We know there was a faith-based message…did Rocky get The Touch? Maybe it’s like Superman Returns, which kept some elements of Superman II and threw away the rest. I will say that Rocky Balboa feels more like a proper conclusion to the series than Rocky V ever could have.
It wasn’t great, or necessarily even very good. It was decent enough to be what it was, though, and I guess that’s all I needed it to be. Well, I guess I needed it to be better than Rocky V, but that ain’t hard to be. Either way, it worked enough to go the distance, but not enough to win. Which, I suppose, is fitting.
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