Resurrecting the dead

Rating: 3/10 (4 July 2014)

Rocky Balboa is back from Russia after defeating Drago. Sleazy promoter George Washington Duke wants Rocky to fight his fighter Union Cane. However Rock is suffering from brain damage and retires. Then they find out that their crooked accountant had lost all their money. Rocky only has Mickey's old gym and he moves back to the old neighborhood. Rocky Balboa Jr. (Sage Stallone) is having trouble with the mean kids. Neighborhood kid Tommy Gunn (Tommy Morrison) begs Rocky to be his manager. Tommy has some success and that's when Duke swoops in.
Stallone is trying to bring back every last bit of goodness from the original. It's part homage and part resurrecting the dead. They have Rocky flashback to Burgess Meredith. They even brought back John G. Avildsen to direct. They engineer Rocky to move back to the old neighborhood in a convoluted manufactured story. There's a younger version of Rocky. They got Sly's son to play Rocky's son.
On paper, this is daring attempt to bring back the glory of the first movie. It's as if everybody had a checklist of things to do. This is not inspired as much as it's constructed. The one thing that this does not have from the original is a sense of reality. The first one had a documentary style feel. A lower class Italian neighborhood is realistic back then. I can't help but notice that the run down place is still filled with mostly white people. There is one attempt at an old hangout that turned into something foreign. It just feels like very fake. It struggles to split the difference between the gritty documentary feel of the original and the glossy formulaic sequels. It needed to choose. It does not and fails to be either.