Throwback Thursday: Romano Reviews Rocky

Everybody loves a classic sports movie. They make the masses believe they can do anything, and offset the reality of complete and utter mediocrity that most of us experience. Their classic tales are epic and inspirational, like the time the Titan’s overcame a racial divide to win the championship, when Rudy finally got to play for Notre Dame, when the USA Olympic hockey team won the Cold War, and then there’s that time Rocky lost (to be fair he also won the Cold War, but we’ll talk about that one later). That’s right friends, today we are time traveling back to November 21, 1976, when the Italian Stallion laced up his gloves and busted up his nose to give the best thing to come out of Philadelphia, since soft pretzels and Hall and Oats (I have no idea when Hall and Oats were popular).

All of my reviews follow a similar format. I will present three things I liked about the movie, three things that were total garbage, and then give it a completely irrelevant, arbitrary, and ambiguous rating. So let's start.

The Good

1. Philadelphia

I’m from Philly, so I’m really critical whenever anyone brings it up or uses Philadelphia in a movie. I go straight on the defensive, because they always get it wrong. Since Sylvester Stallone is from Philly, Rocky nailed everything about it. You will never see a more accurate depiction of Philadelphia in the world of cinema. Sly loves Philly, and Philly loves Sly.

2. Burt Young as Paulie

Listen, I don’t know what it is about Paulie that makes me like him so much. He’s pretty much the worst person. A drunk that systematically gets into trouble, behaves awfully to his sister, and messes up Rocky’s life, but Burt Young nails the character.

3. The Rocky Music

Play this music and every guy in the room will stand up and start throwing punches at the air. There are very few original move scores that are as iconic as this one, and they all come from the 70s.

The Total Garbage

1. Anything Rocky ever said

Listen Rocky is a great movie and Stallone is a good actor in his own right, but Christ that dialogue is bad. I don’t know what’s worse when he says “Where’s your hat” to Adrienne after he goes 15 rounds with the best boxer in the world or “It’s a nice couch I don’t know”.

2. It’s a bit slow until the end

Names something that happens in the first hour of the movie. You can’t because all the good stuff is at the end. The first act is more of a Romance, then anything. I’m sorry but I don’t want to see an hour of Rocky creepily trying to get Adrienne to do things, and Adrienne reluctantly doing them out of pressure.

3. ROCKY IS A FREAKING CRIMINAL!!!!!

This isn’t that big of a bad thing for the film, but I’ve been watching Rocky since I was a kid. Then, I go to watch it as an adult and realize that Gazzo is some sort of loan shark or card shark… or hammerhead shark. So just picture it, you’re a kid that always thought Rocky was some great guy, but then you realize that your childhood hero broke thumbs for a living before he became a boxer. Great!

Definitive Rating: 94 Thrown Down Blessings From Father Carmine