Ranges From Awful to Average to Mildly Entertaining

Rating: 3/10 (22 January 2016)

I went into Creed with some excitement. Despite never actually seeing the other Rocky movies, I was excited to see this one. Unfortunately, I found little substance in this film.
Creed's plot is just like any other sports movie plot. Someone wants to become a big sports star and that's it. There's nothing wrong with that, considering there's not much else you can do about a movie like this.
The characters in the movie aren't horrible, but they aren't great either. Some of them feel a little cliché, but Rocky Balboa specifically really bothered me. He was such an idiot. His choice for a major problem in his life is dumb, his reasoning is even worse, and the outcome is extremely predictable. Other characters did things that were just totally out of character. While characters like Ricky Conlan were built up as someone that you could easily hate, he ultimately destroyed that image of himself. Having actually felt something towards this character, I was immensely disappointed when he suddenly acted so out of character. And again, it was pretty predictable that he would do that. I just hoped that he wouldn't.
Speaking of predictable, that's what this thing is. It's a formula we've all seen before, and its no fun to watch. It's actually rather boring right from the get-go. Formulas aren't always bad, but this movie was so boring and predictable that I couldn't help but notice it. It was right in my face for the whole thing.
My biggest problem of all, however, was the romance. If the romance wasn't in it, the movie would have been average. But it was there, and it ruined the whole thing. It was so unbelievably poorly done. There was almost zero development of the love interest, nor was there any of their relationship. It just happened with barely any explanation. Maybe I missed the progression of time, but nevertheless there wasn't nearly enough time spent with the love interest. She ended up coming off as a forced-in character, simply existing because people expect romance to be in movies nowadays.
Some of the fights were interesting to watch, but the progression from no-name boxer to one of the biggest in the world was too quick. And not just that the progression of time was poorly shown, but that it just happened too quickly. Barely any of Don's fights are shown, and he fights almost none of them once he starts training under Rocky. Barely anything happened in this movie, yet it manages to pull off a 133 minute run time somehow.
Overall Creed it mediocre. It's predictable, boring, rushed, and poorly developed in pretty much every aspect of the movie. There wasn't nearly enough focus on anything, so I felt zero connection to any part of it. The only decent parts were the fights, but it's not like I've never seen fake boxing before, plus I already knew the outcome, so I was never tense or excited about them. In the end I would not recommend Creed, considering there's absolutely nothing special about it.