The pits

Rating: 3/10 (12 July 2003)

* out of ****
The fourth installment in the Rocky series is, in almost every respect, the pits. It is in overblown concoction of bad acting, bad writing, and bad directing. It's really a musical, with an occasional, poorly written scene that merely recycles plot points from the earlier movies, because there's a new song playing every five minutes, whether it's playing over Rocky driving his high priced car or being performed by James Brown. Imagine James Brown performing in the original Rocky. Through all this though, Carl Weathers manages to give a high energy performance, once more, as Apollo Creed. Besides Carl Weathers, there are no other notable performances. Poor Burt Young, who once brought humor to the franchise, has been reduced to political mumbo jumbo. The final fight between Rocky and the super Soviet Ivan Drago is the only part of the movie well executed, but at the same time is wholly unbelievable. When I say final fight, that does not include the few minutes following the fight, for that my friends will make you cringe. During the " No Easy Way Out" montage, clips from the previous Rocky movies are shown. This is the saddest part of the movie because it makes the viewer realize how much they used to care for these characters, before the Rocky franchise became a formulaic, money making machine.