Rocky Was Not at All What I Was Expecting

Sylvester Stallone and Talia Shire in Rocky

Rocky

?Directed by John G. Avildsen?
?Written by Sylvester Stallone?

The review:

My delighted feelings about this film stem from the fact that I grew up in the 80s and what I knew of Rocky* was not what this film was. I was ready for thuggish posturing, best of the best, underdog win-it-all and what I found was a meditation on mediocrity, a mostly sweet love story,** and a main character who knew exactly how subpar he was.*** While the writing was good**** Stallone himself wasn’t great, and that kind of sunk the movie for me.*****

The verdict: Skip

(Though honestly, it’s a piece of Americana, captures an interesting period in the US (Philadelphia looks run-down and trashy and all the cars are so very big) and was much better than I thought it would be, so you should probably see it at some point.)

Cost: Free from the Multnomah County Library
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching:

Further sentences:

*I’ve never seen a single film in the franchise, but I loved Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” from Rocky III and growing up I for-sure saw a lot of ads for the movies.
**With an underdeveloped female and a “charmingly persistent” male. Neither have aged well, but I loved the mousy Adrian we began with.
***Favorite scene: Rocky is invited to fight Apollo Creed and have the chance to become the heavyweight champion of the world. His response and reasoning were exactly right and exactly not what I was expecting.
****There are some really great speeches in this film, mostly coming from Apollo Creed, but also Burgess Meredith has his day too, as does Rocky.
*****I see how he channeled all his feelings about failing as an actor into this script. The problem is, that I think he did fail as an actor; his insistence on being Rocky made for a lesser movie.******
******But this was a huge hit, so clearly many people didn’t have a problems I did with this film.

Questions:

  • When did you first see Rocky? What did you know about it.
  • Rocky and Adrien’s relationship, yay or nay?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Most of the scenes of Rocky jogging through Philadelphia were shot guerrilla-style, with no permits, no equipment, and no extras. The shot where he runs past the moored boat for example, the crew were simply driving by the docks, and John G. Avildsen saw the boat, and thought it would make a good visual, so he had Sylvester Stallone simply get out of the van and run along the quays, while Avildsen himself filmed from the side door. A similar story concerns the famous shot of Rocky jogging through the food market. As he runs, the stall keepers and the people on the sidewalks can clearly be seen looking at him in bemusement. While this works in the context of the film to suggest they’re looking at Rocky, in reality, they had no idea why this man was running up and down the road being filmed from a van.

(A lot of the lore around this film makes for an ever more compelling narrative.)

Other reviews of Rocky:

  • Guess how hard it is to find reviews of Rocky written by women.
Orange background with a white frame. Text: Women weaken legs!—Rocky. Read the three sentence movie review at 3SMReviews.com

I’ve Now Seen Jaws and It Is Excellent

That’s my hot take on this 45-year-old movie.

Jaws
It must have been fun to be an extra for this movie. Look at what a good time that girl on the left is having.

Jaws

Directed by Steven Spielberg
Written by Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb

The review:

Thank goodness for malfunctioning mechanical sharks as the shark-less filmmaking tricks hold tried and true 45 years later, expertly establishing a solid level of fear so that when the mechanical shark does show up* I was willing to treat it with the same amount of fear I had when it was being implied. Aside from many Coronavirus parallels, this movie is packed with excellent scenes** and provides many legitimate scares. I wondered if I would end up rooting for the shark,*** but the menace was properly recorded and while I would have liked to broker a peace agreement to perhaps avoid violence being perpetuated on both sides, I was okay with how things turned out.****

The verdict: Recommended

(It’s ridiculous I am just watching this for the first time.)
(This happens a lot with movies that were released before I could walk)

Cost: $1.99 via Redbox On Demand
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching:

Further sentences:

*It hasn’t aged well, though is pretty impressive from a practical effects standpoint.
**Roy Scheider watching with worry as people frolic on the beach; Robert Shaw’s fingernails-on-chalkboard introduction; Shaw’s tale of the USS Indianapolis; Any scene with Richard Dreyfuss; Lorraine Gary’s realization that sharks can bite through boats and her about face from “it’s okay” status.
***As I did for the whale in the Ron Howard film In the Heart of the Sea.
****This movie also has an interesting split. Most of it is the story of a police chief’s interactions with people in the town and trying to make good decisions. The last section is Men vs. Nature. The end of the film doesn’t wrap back around to tie into the chief/town part. Interesting.

Questions:

  • Does everyone find Richard Dreyfuss as mesmerizing as I do, or is this some imprinting thing that happened to me in the 80s?
  • What was the scariest part for you?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Several decades after the release of Jaws (1975), Lee Fierro, who played Mrs. Kintner, walked into a seafood restaurant and noticed that the menu had an “Alex Kintner Sandwich.” She commented that she had played his mother so many years ago; the owner of the restaurant ran out to meet her, and he was none other than Jeffrey Voorhees, who had played her son. They had not seen each other since the original movie shoot.

Other reviews of Jaws:

Jaws