Rocky 2.0: The Jawn Strikes Back

Rating: 6/10 (11 April 2016)

The original Rocky is a story about a down and out Joe Everyman who's given a great opportunity because of his nickname and gives it everything he's got to better his life with the help of an old trainer. Creed is a story about a wealthy young man who's been given everything in life but is only interested in fighting and is given a great opportunity because of his father's name and gives it everything he's got with the help of an old trainer even though he's been trying to make a name for himself. It's not quite a rehash of Rocky, more like a mishmash of a few of the Rocky films with a dash of unpleasantness in the main character.
Adonis Jawnson loves to fight. He loves it so much it lands him in juvey, when a wealthy woman shows up and offers to take him in. The woman is the widow of his biological father, the great Apollo Creed. Fast forward a whole bunch of years and all is not well... Adonis doesn't care for the good life or job. He wants to fight. He travels to Mexico to do so. He's an alright boxer but he's arrogant and sloppy, as is evident when he accepts the challenge to spar with a top ranked professional and loses badly. Embarrassed and car-less, he gives up his job and moves to Philly to seek out Rocky, who has long since retired from the business and is now running a restaurant. Rocko is initially hesitant but eventually takes the gig and away we go with the training.
When he's not training or flying off the handle and assaulting people, Adonis spends his free time letting his deaf neighbor (and eventual love interest) know that her music is too loud, for which she apologizes but then resumes with the volume unchanged. He later catches her weirdly uncomfortable show at a local club and they go out to get a bite eat. I think he ordered a jawn and she had the jawn, but I can't be sure anymore. I assume they paid their jawn and went home to jawn after, but I was too busy searching on my phone as to what Jawn meant.
After Adonis gets a few professional bouts under his belt, a future prison inmate (and current champion), takes notice of the Creed name and sees dollar signs for his final fight, but the catch is Adonis has to legally change his last name to Creed. Adonis is reluctant because blah blah blah, but eventually agrees and yadda yadda yadda, skip past the weird dirt bike and four wheeler wheelie scene and the championship fight to the end of the movie, and there's some gibberish about "I hope my dad is proud" even though he didn't really seem to care about Apollo all that much to begin with. That's just the feeling I got anyway, but I might have still been trying to figure out what Jawn was by this point.
I have to say I'm pretty surprised about the high ratings and overwhelmingly positive reviews. I heard about the reception well in advance so maybe I just expected too much, but I was quite disappointed. Stallone was fine as Rocky but Creed (the movie and the character) lacks the heart of the original, and Adonis just isn't a likable character. He's rude, arrogant, and violent. He's pretty much the exact opposite of Rocky, and would have been far better suited for the collection job for the loan shark that Rocky tried to do in the first movie but failed at miserably at because he never wanted to hurt anyone.