He’s The Greatest? aka An Older Movie Seen Through Modern Eyes

I know I’m a little behind the times, but I just saw Rocky for the first time, at least in its entirety, last night. Of course, I’m probably justified in that I wasn’t even born when it first premiered. Oh, I know I could have watched it on TV or rented it, but it never really peaked my interest. Tim decided he’d have none of that, so he added it to our Netflix cue, and sure enough, it popped up.

While I don’t normally do this, the following contains spoilers, so I’m going to throw up a big <!!>SPOILER ALERT<!!> right now. If you’ve already seen the movie (which you probably should have by now), or you just don’t care, you’re fine. If you haven’t, proceed at your own caution.

I understand that a lot of people consider it a classic, and I admire Sylvester Stallone for writing it and finding a way to get it made, but I have to say that I wasn’t impressed. The story isn’t particularly interesting, but I did like the fact that he ended up deciding that since he couldn’t win, he’d at least do his best and show his opponent that it wouldn’t be an easy fight. And he did. Apollo Creed, heavyweight champion of the world, bragged that he could down Rocky in three rounds. Rocky ended up staying in for all fifteen. It’s a different kind of ending than the one we’re used to as movie going audiences, so I have to give it props for that. Getting there…Well, now we have an issue.

While I know movie pacing used to be a lot slower, the story drags on like plodding through quicksand. So much time is spent on trying to develop the character of Rocky Balboa, but it’s not done very effectively. By the end of the movie, when he shows his determination, I didn’t want to jump up and shout at his personal victory. I went, “Meh.” Don’t get me wrong here. It’s not like I wasn’t glad for him to have attained his goal; I just didn’t care enough about him as a person to celebrate. He’s not a particularly deep character. He likes boxing and wants to be a boxer, but I never really got any feeling of passion from him. The movie tries to portray him as the misunderstood loner with how he tends to let off the victims of his job of shaking them down for money for a loan shark, but these brief glimpses don’t bring out the “heart” he’s supposed to have. I kind of smiled, but that was it.

Rocky’s biggest failure as a character is how he treats the love of his life, his friend Paulie’s sister, Adrian. You know: “ADRIAN!!!” But I digress. I admit that I kind of found it sweet that in the beginning, he visited the pet store where she worked all the time to, in his boyish way (although he’s supposed to be almost 30 here), let her know that he likes her. The problem I had was how he kept pushing her. She’d barely talk to him and always draw away like she wasn’t interested in him at all. On top of that, Paulie ended up pushing her into a date with Rocky, on Thanksgiving no less! She’d spent some time roasting a turkey, and what does he do? He throws it outside in an effort to make her go out with Rocky. I know that the two just wanted to bring her out of her shell, but that’s harassment! If I were Adrian, I would have punched Rocky in his, as of yet perfectly unbroken nose, to break it and put a restraining order against him. Yeah, the two eventually end up together, and they’re kind of cute, but that journey. *shudder* The sad part is that Adrian is the most developed character in the film.

And that lack of character development is one of the biggest problems I had. I ended up never liking Paulie, even when he did something nice. I always felt those times that he made an attempt to “apologize” for things he did, he was just trying brush it over so he could later try to get something out of them. When he let Rocky train at the meat factory, he still tried getting Rocky to talk to his loan shark boss about hiring Paulie, and then, Rocky got a robe with an advertisement for the company on the back. This is friendship? If so, he needs to get some new ones in the next movies.

While I love Burgess Meredith (I mean, come on, guys; this is the Penguin we’re talking about!), I felt him so sadly underused in this movie. Mickey’s not so great a character himself. For providing a supposedly crucial role, I felt we hardly saw him. Okay, so he gets introduced in the beginning as the owner(?) of the gym where Rocky’s been training, and he scoffs at our one day champ that he could be great (because of that “heart”) but that he doesn’t have the drive to do anything with it. Then, when Rocky gets the deal to fight Apollo Creed, oh now Mickey wants to be a part of it. I admit that that scene was kind of good, mostly because Mickey did deserve it, but then Rocky goes out and makes up with him and makes Mickey his manager. Fine, but then we barely see Mickey doing anything to help. Sorry, but I had a problem with that.

In the end, I think the movie’s faults overwhelm its successes. It might be a realistic portrayal of what might happen, but I just couldn’t get into caring about any of the people involved, especially the main character. I found him shallow and just shy of being a stalker. I also thought Adrian gave in to his very forward advances a little too quickly. I would have called the cops on Paulie, and I would have told Mickey to go to hell. And the ending was totally anti-climactic. For building up to be this big battle, they did a brief montage of what might have been the highlights of the fight. But it went for fifteen rounds, and we got to see maybe five to ten minutes of it? There’s a big disconnect here that made the ending fall flat for me.

Seeing Rocky for the first time in its entirety makes me wonder why people think so highly of this film. As I’ve pointed out, it doesn’t exactly have a well expressed plot, and the characters aren’t particularly likable or have any real depth. I also felt like the actors tended to just read the lines instead of actually act them. And to be honest, I’ve seen better movies that deal with overcoming difficult odds to triumph, at least as best as you can. Again, I’m glad Stallone made the movie because it seems to be the moment that really launched his career, but I could have done without it in my life. I get a few references in other movies now that I didn’t before, but that was the only benefit to seeing this.

If you actually enjoy this movie, great! More power to you. As for me, I think I’m going to skip a repeat performance. (Though Tim has the sequels in the Netflix cue…)