I wonder what butterscotch jellybeans tastes like

Rating: 10/10 (25 January 2014)

Sylvester Stallone didn't really want to do this and Robert DeNiro talked him into it. Sounds like part of the plot of the movie. I'm sure glad Stallone did take this role and yes it does go into Rocky a lot however it was done right. The eggs, the meat and the training sequence (I won't go into all of the other references as I read another review that mentions more then I could count.) Stallone acts again without killing or blowing up any one. Of course there are no cry scenes unfortunately because he can cry up a storm if he had too.
There are a lot of homages then just Rocky, there's The Sunshine Boys (2 rivals getting together again), a tad of Nobody's Fool (Robert DeNiro and the grandson) Grumpy Old Men, and very little (I'm surprised) of Raging Bull. When I saw the trailer I thought of The Sunshine Boys as DeNiro took on the George Burns role and Stallone the Matthau role and yes it turns more like a Grumpy Old Boxers then The Sunshine Boxers but I didn't care. I was still entertained by this movie and love to watch it again.
Of course this movie doesn't get edgy (Raging Bull, Taxi Driver) or is academy award driven like The Sunshine Boys and I didn't expect that but it was well acted and I felt for the characters. The difference was in Rocky you wanted Rocky to win and this movie it was a split. You wanted both to win.
All the other actors are quite good. Kevin Hart wasn't all that annoying, Alan Arkin plays the old guy who steals the scenes he's in, Kim Basinger, Camden Gray but I have to give a big big hand to Jon Benthal (Snitch and his most famous, playing Shane in The Walking Dead). He's picking out the right medium roles with the likes of Dwayne Johnson (Snitch) and of course Stallone and DeNiro that someone said he's going to be a big star and I agree entirely. Him and DeNiro played well together. I also just found he's in The Wolf Of Wall Street (a movie that didn't interest me until now) and a future war movie w/Brad Pitt, yes he's going to be a big star to contend with.
All in all I did love this movie. When I watch a movie I watch like everyone else then I start to get a feeling and that feeling is like a high and the higher it gets the more I can't put this movie down. There's nothing to put down here. I'm one who did watch Batman and Robin and enjoyed it and a few others I liked that others would question. There are not many movies that I didn't enjoy, good or bad.