Cheesy like Rocky IV but without the atmosphere and thrils.

Rating: 4/10 (23 February 2019)

How this gets 7.4 here on IMDB and 84% on Rotten Tomatoes is beyond me. It was an averagely entertaining film but deeply flawed. Maybe i was just in a bad mood because reading some of the negative reviews here none of them point out the problems i had with the film. Basically Creed II tried on one one hand be a very cliched cheesy film but also seemed to think it was a classy, craft-film at the same time. It follows and does many of the same cheesy things Rocky IV did but at the same time pulls back on the musical cues that tell us how to feel and almost mutes the audience reactions during the fights so that everything is subdued. Now Rocky IV is a classic of fun cheese and if you're going down that road then that's how you do it, you can't have your cake and eat it like Creed II tries. The fight shots in the ring were all so obviously filmed in front of a green screen and terribly composited into the crowd backgrounds that it constantly drew me out of the illusion and i don't understand why no one else has mentioned this. As i mentioned before, there's a complete lack of audience reaction and atmosphere during the fights and stirring musical cues were non-existent despite every punch thrown being a silly overblown haymaker that the fighters just shook off. Nothing worked well for me at all, there was no excitement!
I quite liked the quieter moments, that's the true heart of a film like this but as many have stated, Creed just comes off as whiny and weak.