I gotta agree with DA, and this coming from someone that doesn't like the ROCKY movies.
I mean, the original ROCKY is a pretty effective drama that works everytime I watch it. But ROCKY II basically was Stallone writing a piss-poor romantic melodrama, though that movie mostly works until the coma, which kills whatever positive momentum it has.
Now ROCKY III and ROCKY IV became the cartoonish go-go USA sequels, much like their RAMBO cousins. Instead of a down and out Italian meathead in Philadelphia getting a shot at the title, and then winning it in the re-match...its now Stallone being a pompous bitch after winning, getting whopped by Mr. T, crying like a little bitch, then regaining the title.
But ROCKY IV...I mean, the finale sequence is laughable. Tell me folks, would the American President stand up and applaud a Russkie fighter trashing an American boxer at Madison Square Garden? Come on!
Less said about ROCKY V the better.
Thing is, ROCKY BALBOA felt like a sincere return to the naturalism of the first movie without mostly the sillyness of the sequels. I say mostly because many scenes of Rocky's kid and the girl from the original movie seem rather forced, but I'll let them slide.
Why? Because like Don Andrew said himself, it returns to the fact that in ROCKY, Balboa simply wanted to prove that he could last it out with the world's best fighter, and not another meathead hack boxer. With ROCKY BALBOA, its a has-been legend wanting to show that he aint a has-been, and against perhaps the first ROCKY in-ring film opponent that is sympathetic. A worthy champion that came a generation too late, for now he is the king fish of simply a little pond.
I liked this movie. I was hoping that it would make up for the nonsense of ROCKY III, IV, V, and parts of ROCKY II, and it does.
Hell, like DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE, I now believe that ROCKY BALBOA is the only true "sequel" to the original ROCKY.
Thanks all to DA for reminding me about the flick.
ROCKY (1976) - **** ROCKY II (1979) - **1/2 ROCKY III (1982) - ** ROCKY IV (1985) - *1/2 ROCKY V (1990) - * - BOMB ROCKY BALBOA (2006) - ***
