Happy December 26th, everyone! Or, as the Canadians, Aussies, and Brits would say, happy Boxing Day! Ha! Get it? Boxing Day? Rocky Balboa? (If you're groaning or wincing right now, I can't blame you, but I'll take any gimmicky excuse to watch a movie at this point; Christmas has massacred my backlog and I've got a lot of work to do if I have any chance of netting any progress on the year in my movie count.) If you pay attention to this blog with regularity, you'll recall that I watched the second, third, fourth, and fifth Rocky movies in a three-day span last September. The devolution and degradation of the franchise were slow and steady but very total; between '80s robots and over-the-top anti-Sovietism and, well, Rocky V, the series ended on a note that must have been an utter embarrassment to its Oscar-winning roots. At least, that's the way the situation stood for sixteen years. And then Rocky Balboa came along and saved the franchise's legacy. The Rocky we see here today has endured several key changes in his life and returned to simpler means in an unassuming Philadelphia home. He runs a restaurant. He's still a proud man, but he knows his glory days are far behind him, and he almost seems happier that way. - at least until he decides to go for broke and compete in one last boxing match. I give Stallone all kinds of credit for this one. No one at all was calling for a continuation of the Rocky franchise in 2006, and during its production the project was an easy target for ridicule and lampooning. But he wrote and directed a pretty good movie all the same. And the guy also got ripped all over again - at sixty years of age, no less - and put on a great performance to boot. I enjoyed this movie and the good news is that you don't even need to see any of the first five flicks to appreciate this one just fine.
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