Review: Rocky II

After taking the champ to the limit, Rocky Balboa (Sly Stallone) decides to hang up the gloves, marry Adrian (Talia Shire) and live the quiet life. However, with bills to pay and a baby on the way, Rocky struggles to find suitable post-boxing work and is also suffering from failing eyesight in one of his eyes. Meanwhile, World Heavyweight Champ Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) has decided he’d like a rematch after all, despite what he said at the end of the previous film. His ego has been bruised, and it nags at him. He publicly goads Rocky in the media to face him one more time to prove it wasn’t just a fluke that he ‘The Italian Stallion’ was able to push the champ to the limit. Burgess Meredith, Burt Young, Joe Spinell, and Tony Burton all reprise their roles as trainer Mickey, deadbeat brother-in-law Paulie, loan shark Gazzo, and Apollo’s trainer Duke, respectively. Frank McRae plays Rocky’s boss at the meat factory, and John Pleshette plays an impatient commercial director.

 

Sylvester Stallone just couldn’t help himself after his first big hit. He specifically wrote dialogue for the first “Rocky” ruling out a rematch between the two main combatants. We all saw it, dude. Then I guess he saw the box-office bonanza the first film became and well, here we are with this 1979 sequel that he not only scripts and stars in, but also directs. Just as he gave Rambo (and by extension, America) a rah-rah moment in ‘winning the Vietnam War’ in “Rambo: First Blood Part II”, here he is giving us the same damn “Rocky” movie, but with a different ending. Even though Rocky didn’t win in the fight in the first film he won the girl and won everybody’s respect by going the distance, so it was a pretty happy ending. I guess that wasn’t happy enough and now here we are with the very definition of a crowd-pleasing flick, right down to the groan-inducing re-tread of the running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this time with a crowd joining him. Ugh.

 

In some ways, it’s kind of admirable to give the crowd the film they want. I get that, and Stallone’s probably given us that quite aptly here. However, it’s also a film that starts with the finale of the first film explicitly showing the ‘There ain’t gonna be no rematch’/‘Don’t want none!’ exchange, which is just a boneheaded move by Stallone. At one point Creed says ‘I won, but I didn’t beat him’, doing his best to justify the film’s existence. I nearly bought it too. Of all the “Rocky” sequels, this isn’t the worst, but it’s certainly the least fresh and it’s entirely due to the boxing part of the story. The only merit that the boxing part of the story has here is that both guys admittedly have something to lose: Creed his title, Rocky losing face for potentially doing worse than last time. But honestly, I think the ‘fighter goads retired Rocky into one more fight’ thing worked better in the next film, the highly underrated “Rocky III”.

 

Thankfully, the non-boxing aspects to the story work really well. Even in this lesser film, the love story between Rocky and Adrian is just lovely, sweet, and touching. I love how he’s talkative and she’s decidedly mousy and painfully shy- together they fit. Sly Stallone might come across as an egotist in real-life, but Rocky Balboa is clearly the nicest, most ingratiating and sympathetic character he has ever played. He’s easy to root for, I may not love the film, but I do love the character. There’s a particularly touching scene later on with Rocky reading to Adrian. Or is he reading to improve himself? Probably both, either way it’s really sweet. The other aspect to the story that I like is Rocky trying to deal with his celebrity: Cars, commercials etc. That stuff works, too. Also, Burgess Meredith is once again wonderful as crusty old trainer Mickey, probably getting a better showing here, and delivering his infamous ‘You’re gonna eat lightnin’ and crap thunder!’ speech. For a guy who looks about 90 here, he was actually only 79 at the time and lived until he was 90, dying in 1997 after a pretty eclectic career. He was a treasure. I was less happy to see Joe Spinell back as the world’s most genial loan shark, I really don’t think the character serves any useful purpose this time around, through no fault of the actor’s. Sly’s brother Frank turns up again as a doo-wop singer and even gets a line of dialogue this time out. Hooray for nepotism I guess.

 

Textbook feel-good filmmaking, I mean Rocky even wears a ‘Win Rocky Win’ t-shirt for crying out loud. For the most part, it’s a re-tread of the original film but with a different outcome and diminishing returns. It exists solely to please and make money, which is fine, it’s just less ambitious and considerably less interesting. It’s a solid film, but the first film was a masterpiece.

Rating: B-