Rocky Balboa

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Burt Young, Antonio Tarver, Geraldine Hughes, Milo Ventimiglia, Tony Burton

Written by: Sylvester Stallone

Directed by: Sylvester Stallone

Distributor: MGM Pictures

Rated: PG

While we don’t always get a new president every four years (even if it is a different guy who got elected), we are averaging a new Rocky film every five. The sixth film in the Rocky series, Rocky Balboa, proves once again that in Hollywood, nostalgia breeds repetition. Whether or not this film is a financial success, the fact that it got made at all is proof that nostalgia alone is enough to get $24 million plugged into a film. Even after five different trips to the screen over the course of the past three decades, writer/director/star Sylvester Stallone somehow manages to tell the same story again. Yes, you get a distinctly different experience with every Rocky movie, but you also get a distinctly different experience with every trip to the DMV or the dentist – even if there are a few things different here and there, you know generally what’s going to happen every time.

Over 30 years, Stallone’s Rocky plot formula has become so perfunctory that it feels painfully gouged into the production. Many years after his last trip to the screen, retired former two-time heavyweight champ Rocky Balboa (Stallone) runs a restaurant named after his late wife Adrian. Rocky is dragged out of retirement when a computer simulation shows him beating current heavyweight champ Mason Dixon (played by real-life three time light-heavy-weight champ Antonio Tarver). Dixon is challenged to fight Balboa in a charity exhibition match live on pay-per-view from Las Vegas. It all ends predictably, particularly if you’ve seen the original Rocky film. Rocky Balboa is heavily marketed as being the last film in the series and it plays heavily on very specific elements from the original.

It’s a bit sad to see the champ go out on such a painfully uneventful retread. Painted flat enough to be Rocky’s nemesis, Dixon isn’t a particularly interesting villain. And why set Stallone up against someone who has never been in a feature film before? If you really want to make the last Rocky film an event, set Stallone up against someone closer to his own stature – set him up against Schwarzenegger. (In this corner, at 5’10” with a lifetime total worldwide box-office gross of over $3.4 billion—60-year-old Sylvester Stallone! And in this corner at 6’2” with a lifetime worldwide box-office gross of over $3.8 billion—59-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger!)

It may not be very fresh or register as much of an event, but those interested in an entertaining film without any real surprises have an hour and a half without disappointment awaiting them at the box office this Christmas. Like the title character, it’s a bit slow to start, but builds up momentum and winds up being successfully entertaining in the end. The fight that the whole film builds up to is actually a really well directed Hollywood boxing match, which is almost enough to justify the price of admission if you’re sitting close and paying matinee prices. Fans probably won’t be disappointed. Over the past 30 years, Stallone has etched-out a likeable guy as a Hollywood king of the ring. This doesn’t do a whole lot of justice to the sport of boxing, which has featured some real anti-heroes in the spotlight. Somewhere between Rocky II and Rocky III, Robert De Niro starred in a Martin Scorcese film that showed the full complexity of a boxing icon. Even at its best, Rocky has never lived up to Raging Bull. VS