The Big Whatsit

Right then, let’s get Rocky V out of the way. Even by the lowly critical standards of the rest of the series, it’s a poor film. Stallone Sr has disowned it. Stallone Jr is practically on the rocks as a consequence of it. Adriaaaaaan preferred to die rather than appear in another instalment after it. I don’t know what the worst thing about it is, but maybe the following bullet points will provide some of the answers…

• George Washington Duke - yes, Sly, we know that boxing agents are immoral beings, seeing nothing beyond the greens they can squeeze from the last drops of this discredited sport. Do you really have to hammer the point home with this cartoon character, though, this Donkinglite caricature?
• Going back to his roots - why? Is it not enough for the poor bugger to have brain damage, when you also contrive some twist whereby the Balboa family lose all their wealth and wind up back in slummy Philadelphia? Why would anyone, even someone with a Stegosaurus capacity for lateral thinking like Rocky, leave Uncle Paulie in charge of the money? Wouldn’t they have an army of acountants to handle the wonga? But no, here’s Paulie, a man who hasn’t changed his string vest in seven years, left to dribble the milions away, presumably on the racetrack…
• Tommy Gunn - in fairness, Rocky’s opponents have rarely been anything more than cardboard cutouts, but Gunn is an insult to most immobile objects. Wearing a permanent gormless expression, which is supposed to look mean but actually makes him appear to be pondering whether he’s pointed in the right direction, ‘Machine’ deserves the legend as he has all the acting talent of an electric whisk. And he isn’t even the worst thing in this. Oh no, here comes…
• Rocky Balboa Jr - hell’s bells, you could write essays about what’s wrong with this. Apparently, there’s some lost footage from the outtakes that has since been lost, in which Sly tests out his lines with Sage, only because the boy’s at school at the time, he acts with a tub of lard instead. And you know what? Stallone should have saved himself a bit of cash and recruited Tesco Lard instead. Sage is pisspore, destined to share the ‘This is what happens when you cast your family in movies’ award with Sofia Coppola in a neverending spiral of Hollywood iniquity. Egos on fire, as Survivor might have sang.
• Mickey the Ghost - the flashback where (a very, very old looking) Burgess Meredith gives Rocky Marciano’s cufflink to Balboa isn’t so bad. It’s the bit later I’m talking about. Hands up who thought this was a good idea? On what level would it possibly work? Or did Stallone take the afternoon off when writing this sequence, and hand screenplay composition duties over to Sage?
• Father Carmine - randomly appears at points in most Rocky movies to smile benignly and dole out blessings. It’s a little like Rocky’s promoting the old days of the Church doling out papal blessings, and pinpoints something that’s very wrong at the heart of Catholicism. So Rocky has God on his side? God likes likeable losers who take a good beating, does he? Erm, well I suppose that figures, but then it opens up an entire Christ dimension to Balboa that takes the series down a path I think it oughtn’t to take. Anyway, Father Carmine. Like, what’s all that about? Could we all, when seeking inspiration, perhaps on the way to a job interview, bellow at the local priest to appear at his window and whack off a blessing?

You get the general idea. As a film, it takes even more liberties than its predecessors, comes across as hastily, shoddily produced and a flick of the bird to fans everywhere, and by some distance marks the franchise’s nadir. The worst part about it is that this was meant to be a return to its roots. Original Rocky director John Avildsen was back, replacing Stallone himself behind the camera, and the action moved back to a perpetually wintry Philadephia in a vain attempt to inject some credibility into the series after the excesses of parts three and four. But this doesn’t happen. The points above are intended to be a laugh, my effort at producing something you might read in the acerbic, harsh-tongued pages of The Guardian Guide these days (when not written by the excellent Joe Queenan). I still think the general sentiment holds true. It’s an appalling venture, one that would appear to have killed the eponymous lead off for good.

Or, fortunately for us, not. It’s a nice postscript to Rocky that Stallone had one more shot left in him, this year’s Rocky Balboa. And it’s a good one. Why does it work? For a start, all the bombast of the halcyon days has been stripped away. When you see Rocky living his post-Adriaaaaaaaan life it actually seems quite believable. The things he does and the way he deals with people are reasonably close to how you would imagine it to be for him. He spends time sitting by Adriaaaaan’s grave, feeds the pigeons, runs his rather ramshackle restaurant, regales his punters with talk of fights long past, makes friends with a sad waitress (played with affection by Belfast actor, Geraldine Hughes), and tries to keep up with a son who wants nothing more than to step out from beneath his famous dad’s shadow. Suddenly, Paulie has more to do. He isn’t the butt of the jokes, and no longer seems content to provide the film’s ‘bum’ quotient. A bit more three dimensional, it’s nice to see why anyone would want to stick around with him after all these years.

Rocky can’t be Rocky without a bout of some description. The contrivance of said climactic fight is the movie’s weak point, tenuously justified on the basis that it’s what George Foreman would do. Even so, when it actually happens the ring action is toned down from the epic antics of yore, which makes sense. Also, though Mason ‘the Line’ (I quite like that, Pynchon fans) Dixon is as stereotypical as any of Rocky’s opponents, he’s at least given some motive, a sprinkling of logical behaviour.

Yet for all the fun of the final scenes, it’s the Philadelphia stuff I enjoy the most, the simple voyeuristic pleasure of watching Rocky as an old man (and he looks all of those sixteen years since Rocky V) go about his daily business. If anything, it’s a bit like catching up with an old friend. Of course, I know even as I type these words that Rocky Balboa isn’t really a very good film. It’s simplistic, nakedly heart-tugging, and as ever the development of the plot doesn’t need a soothsayer to predict how things will turn out. But then the best elements of the other movies were exactly the same. This is a fan’s affair. Those who like the series will enjoy this one. Everyone else will hate it, and rightly so. In the final reel, Rocky waves to his fans, a big grin on his face, looking for all the world like he’s just about pulled it off. As a triumphant climax to the series, I suppose he has, and there’s even some nice credits footage of normal people (i.e. not Stallone, or film folk in general) gambolling at the top of the Philadelphia Art Museum steps, the sight of Rocky’s pre-fight training that culminates with the obligatory, celebratory close of ‘Gonna fly now’. If you get all this, and get something from it, it’s lovely stuff.