Hit me baby one more time

Rating: 5/10 (6 June 2005)

And so to the third Rocky in which a complacent Stallone has grown fat on opulence and celebrity and finds himself unprepared for the hungry and you'd have to say insane challenger, Clubber Lang, none other than Mr.T in the first role of a surprisingly undistinguished movie career. Rocky's beaten naturally because his cheque book isn't quite strong enough to cushion Lang's punches and even worse, Lang has roughed up trainer Mickey and caused him to have a fatal heart attack. Such setbacks would dampen the spirits of lesser men and sure enough Balboa slips into a depression and something of an existential crisis. Thankgoodness then for old adversary, turned friend Apollo Creed who tells Rocky to pick himself up, read up on Tigers and take himself to the beach for a bit of homo-erotic horseplay, then on to the ring to teach the new champ a damn good lesson...
Rocky III may be a comment on the promise of the American ideal corrupted by its vast wealth and unrestrained capitalism. Then again that could be nonsense. In Rocky you've got the embodiment of the American dream gone soft and no longer possessing the spirit that was the source of his power and influence. He's reduced to commercial endorsements and expensive suites and even more embarrassingly, Wrestling Exibition fights. He's lost his heart and his self-respect, y'know the kind you only have when you're poor and he needs to get it back because at this point there's still an hour of the film left. The third film is a bit of a weird one because though perfectly watchable its got moments of supreme silliness. All of a sudden Rocky can't get anywhere near a ring without oiling himself up. Creed seems obsessed with the tie-in track and mentions it every five minutes and we learn that the only way to get your respect back is to do imitations of wild animals and jump about in the sand with the spray of the ocean suggestively foaming all over you. We're left with this rather strange situation in which the film is softened by the same commerical pressures that Rocky himself proved susceptible too. It's Rocky now as franchise - product and as a result there's none of the dramatic pretencions of early movies. It's strictly formula which is fine but it might leave you wondering where the series could go after this. Well Russia of course!