Rocky in Review, Part 4: Why Rocky Balboa Is an Lifelong Favorite
Looking back at a movie I've adored since 2006
On Thursdays for the foreseeable future, I’ll be publishing reviews of classic movies, pieces that have never appeared here before taken from my book 200 Reviews, available now in Paperback or on Kindle (which you should really consider buying, because it’s an awesome collection!). For our first set of films, we’re looking at the Rocky series, continuing today with the last entry of the original series, Rocky Balboa.
Rocky Balboa - 2006, Dir. Sylvester Stallone
Originally written March 7th, 2023, incorporating an excerpt written December 2006
Story time: The first Top 10 list I ever made was for the best films of 2006, when I was 14 and still in Middle School, and I named Rocky Balboa the best film of that year. I think that was the year I first got into the Rockymovies, and this one really took me aback at the time. I'd been writing about films for a while at that point for The Denver Post's Colorado Kids section, and was just starting my own blog on the Post's community journalism site YourHub. 2006 and 2007 were really the key years that opened my eyes to the power of movies long term. But man, there was something special about Rocky Balboa to me – just the quiet seriousness with which Stallone returned to this world, and the simple but forceful way the film tied together the core perseverance ethos of the entire series. I was passionate about it. Here’s what I wrote about the film in that Top 10 list back in 2006:
Stallone’s final entry in the Rocky series is the best since the first, released 30 years ago in 1976. While not better than the original, the way it mirrors the themes and plot of the first film is spectacularly done, and has you rooting for good old Rocky right until the end. You don’t see a movie like this anymore. There are no big special effects, no stupid action scenes, and no unnecessary crudeness. Just lots and lots of heart, and that’s the best kind of film.
A few months after I wrote that piece, I applied to go to the Denver School of the Arts' film program; it was a kind of prestigious arts-focused school in downtown Denver, and I had a chip on my shoulder feeling like I was too smart for the shitty public schools I'd been attending in Golden. I had a portfolio of my written work I submitted to show off my love of film, and I remember in the interview the teacher who led that department challenging me on the choice to put Rocky Balboa at the top. I also had Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men on there, which he evidently thought was the actual artistic choice, and he talked to me like I was some kind of country bumpkin for ranking Rocky at #1 over the serious end-of-the-world drama. I could tell I wasn't getting into the school right then and there – I still remember the patronizing, elitist venom of that entire line of questioning, how demeaning it was. If I'd put the 'artsier' film at #1, would I have gotten in?
Ah, who knows? Here's what I do know:
1) Rocky Balboa may have helped me dodge a bullet, because I made some important lasting friendships at the local public school I wound up going to instead, and in hindsight I'm glad things went the way they did. There’d be no Weekly Stuff Podcast or Japanimation Station if Sean Chapman and I hadn’t bonded over lunchtime chats about video games and anime.
2) I'm on the verge of getting my Ph.D. in film studies from the great University of Iowa, so, you know, joke's on that asshole.
3) Rocky Balboa still slaps.
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