Movie Review Rocky Balboa

With the Pittsburgh Steelers out of the NFL playoffs, I decided to take in a move this afternoon.


Today I went and saw the movie Rocky Balboa. This was the sixth part in the Rocky series, the fifth Rocky left everyone with a bad feeling and I guess Sylvester Stallone decided he wanted to do a fifth.

I've been following the production of this movie for some time, so I had already seen all the trailers and had actually already read the script. I knew what to expect when I walked into the theater.

The first 2/3 of the movie I am sitting there thinking that this could possibly win another Academy Award. It was captivating and it was a story that covers the last thirty one years as we have watched this character develop. I grew up with the character and you could relate to the characters as if you had lived everything with them.

The new character development was great. They had developed a story line for Mason "The Line" Dixon as well as any character that was ever written about in the series. At first the movie could have almost been about him and I thought they developed a personable side that you could relate to. A small sample

Rocky, had lost Adrien in 1995 and his son had grown up. He has an encounter of meeting the little girl from Rocky I that he walked home and she yelled "Screw you creepo". That story line started to develop into a love affair, but Rocky's inspiration was the past and his long lost wife.

About 2/3rds of the way into the movie it went from a very well set up movie with a great story line, to a B movie rushing to get everything in under budget. Characters went from being someone you could deeply relate to to an actor saying his lines.

I think it started out great, but at some point during production they went from being artistic and making this an A movie, to meeting a budget and making it a B movie.

Like I said, I already knew the script, and where the actors would have gotten a 10 at the beginning, I gave them about a 2 at the end.

Had Stallone possibly sought additional financing and extended it a few more minutes, it could have been Oscar worthy. I was very excited in seeing the movie, but I think they dropped the ball on this one.

I will own this DVD.