The original still packs a mean punch

Rating: 8/10 (4 May 2006)

I cannot tell you how many people make fun of me for loving this movie. Never mind the fact that it was the top grossing film of 1976, and won a whole slew of industry awards, including the highly coveted Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. Perhaps it is the eventual deterioration of Sylvester Stallone's career (I still sympathize with the mental anguish that anyone who saw 1995's JUDGE DREAD in it's entirety suffered), or maybe it's the endless series of glitzy sequels and imitations that the film inspired (which did become numbing), but, for whatever reason, the reputation of this film seemed to get permanently soiled along the way. This is a shame, because ROCKY remains possibly the best underdog romance ever.
After years of glossy sequels, it's a bit amazing in retrospect how grim and downtrodden much of the film feels. There is a moving aura of sadness and desperation that hangs over the majority of the film's characters, as if they all realize that they have wasted much of lives and are running out of time. Though he has (perhaps deservedly) become the butt of hundreds of jokes over the years, Sylvester Stallone (who also penned the film's screenplay) has undeniable charisma and displays mega-watt star power in this picture. Many people may forget this now, but many respected film critics actually compared Stallone to a young Marlon Brando when the film originally opened, and that high form of praise is rarely dispensed if undeserved.
The remainder of the cast is similarly winning, particularly the quiet strength of Talia Shire, long before she became a punch-line on the sitcom "Friends." So many film romances have used the tired plot device of the ugly ducking who becomes beautiful by the film's finale, but Shire truly does make the transition from a put-on wallflower to a beauty right in front of our very eyes. Her transformation is so truly convincing that it makes the cliché seem fresh. The sister of director Francis Ford Coppola, Shire still acts today (most in bit and supporting parts) with considerable regularity, but I would love to see her tackle another lead role again in the future.
Inspired by Mohamad Ali, Carl Weather's Apollo Creed is appropriately energetic and arrogant, while Burt Young's despicable leach of a brother is so unsympathetic that you actually start to like him about halfway through the film. Best of all is Burgess Meredith, whose short-tempered trainer could have ventured into unbearable campiness, but Meredith's fiery hostility is interlaced with considerable nuance. All these individuals seem less like film characters and more like real people, a feeling that is enhanced by the pseudo-docudrama style in which John G. Avildsen directs. And that, in and of it's self, is a far cry from all the glossy sequels that followed.