"Rocky:" A Feel-Good Film for 1976 or Any Year

Rated: Classic ****

Reviewed by Connie Corcoran Wilson

Quad City Times, Wed., Feb. 2, 1977

(The following review will be included in Connie's spring release "Classic Cinema of the 70's: From 'The Godfather' to 'Apocalypse Now.'" Reprinted by written permission of the Quad City Times.)

In March of 1975, Chuck Wepner, a so-so New Jersey boxer nicknamed "The Bayonne Bleeder," climbed into the ring with Muhammad Ali, the heavyweight champin of the world and lasted 15 rounds.

It may be that Rocky Balboa, hero of the current movie "Rocky," (opening February 9 at the Showcase Cinemas, Milan) is based on Wepner's shot at the crown. During Ali's "bum of the week" phase, he took on Wepner and other non-name fighters like Ron Stander of Council Bluffs, Iowa, "The Bluffs Butcher."

These fighters had one thing in common and that was the complete unlikelihood of their ever competing in the ring for that once-in-a-lifetime shot at the heavyweight championship.

Writer-actor Sylvester Stallone "(The Lords of Flatbush") has taken this familiar boxing story and scored a personal triumph with his telling of it.

In Stallone's story, a local Philadelphia club fighter cast in this Cinderella role as the white challenger opposite black heavyweight champion Apollo Creed (played by ex-Oakland Raider linebacker Carl Weathers) gives his all to go the distance and prove "that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood."

Creed picks the unkown "Italian Stallion" to capitalize on the "home-town-boy-given-shot-at-title" angle, as a Bicentennial gimmick.

Little does Creed realize what he has let himself in for. Rocky fights the fight of his life, despite the fact that his own 76-year-old has-been manager Mickey (Burgess Meredith) has told him, "You got heart, but you fight like a damned ape."

The audience is, early-on, informed that Rocky's hulking physique conceals a tender heart. He is ineffectual as a loan shark's enforcer because he can't bring himself to break a deadbeat's thumbs.

Like Ernest Borgnine's "Marty," "Rocky" is a sensitive soul who sees parakeets perceptively enough to describe them as being "like flying candy." A pet lover, he talks to a bulldog named Butkus and worries about the diet of his pet turles, Cuff and Link. Rocky complains to pet store clerk Talia Shire (Academy Award nominee for her role as Connie, "The Godfather's" daughter) that there are more moths than flies in the turtle food, and the moths become stuck in his turles' throats, causing them to choke. Rocky has to pound them on their backs, and he says, "They'll get shell-shocked!"

Adrian (Talia Shire), the pet food clerk, is Rocky's slowly-budding romantic interest. She is a mousy, drab creature who lives with her brother Paulie (Burt Young) and at first shyly, but insistently, resists Rocky's awkward, well-intentioned advances. Althought this is their love story as much or more than the story of Rocky's fight for the title, there is only one chaste love scene.

The movie, in some scenes, becomes a visual poem. Director John Avildesen ("Save the Tiger") has a real feeling for Philadelphia, and shows Rocky training amidst its boisterous neighborhood tenements, running through the garbage-strewn ghost-like streets in the pre-dawn hours.

The musical sound track (composed by Bill Conti, and including one song "Take Me Back" composed by Frank Stallone, Jr.) chants "Getting stronger" to a rock beat as Rocky finally is able to run non-stop up the steps of Philadelphia's Museum of Art (located at the entrance to Benjamin Franklin Parkway) and raise his hands above his head in the victor's familiar salue as he gazes out at the silhouetted statue of General George Washington.

Since this is a fight film, some special praise is due the fight scenes. The credits list them as having been choreographed by Sylvester Stallone. (The man's a triple threat!) They are superior---better than "Golden Boy," better than "Somebody Up There Likes Me," and as good as those in Jack Palance's television masterpiece "Requieru for a Heavyweight" (which contained actual footage of real boxers in the opening gym sequences, including then-unknown Cassius Clay.)

Technially, and in every other way, we have in "Rocky" that unique commodity, a throwback movie which is better than the original(s). The fact that the film glorifies the currently unfashionable virtues of hard work and determination is going to make it popular with viewers who are old enough to remember the Friday Night Fights.

Yet, it is contemporary enough, in its up-tempo use of humor dialogue and authentically-staged fight scenes, to attract younger audiences. And, above all, it is a warm story of personal human achievement.

Director Avildsen mortgaged his house because he believed in Stallone and in his right to play the lead role in his own screenplay.

Audiences wil find the touching, hope-affirming saga of Sylvester Stallone rewarding both as real-life drama and also, onscreen, as a well-made film that avoids sentimentality while striking a responsive human chord in all of us.

Cast and Crew:

Release date: December 3, 1976

Running Time: 119 minutes, color

Director: John G. Avildsen

Writer: Sylvester Stallone

Rocky Balboa Sylvester Stallone

Adrianna "Adrian" Pennino Talia Shire

Paulie Pennino Burt Young

Apollo Creed Carl Weathers

Mickey Goldmill Burgess Meredith

Jergens Thayer David

Gazzo Joe Spinell

Mike Jimmy Gambina

Fight Announcer Bill Baldwin

Cut Man (as Al Salvani) Al Silvani

Ice Rink Attendant George Memmoli

Marie Jodi Letizia

TV Commentators Diana Lewis

George O'Hanlon

Larry Carroll

Dipper Stan Shaw

Bartender Don Sherman

Club Fight Announcer Billy Sands

Spider Rico Pedro Lovell

Apollo's Corner DeForest Covan

Club Corner Man Simmy Bow

Apollo's Trainer Tony Burton

Apollo Corner Man Hank Rolike

Secretary Shirley O'Hara

Paulie's Date Kathleeen Parker

Timekeeper Frank Stallone

Drunk Lloyd Kaufman

Owner of Pet Shop Jane Marla Robbins

Fats Jack Hollander

Bodyguard Joe Sorbello

Chiptooth Christopher Avildsen

Club Fight Referee Franie Van

Championship Fight Announcer Lou Fillipo

Fighter Paris Eagle

Streetcorner Singers: Robert L. Tangrea

Peter Glassberg

William E. Ring

Joseph C. Giambelluc

Joe Frazier Joe Frazier (as himself)

Dog Butkus Stallone

Trivia:

Questions:

1) What two actors did the United Artists want to cast in the role, rather than Sylvester Stallone, himself?

2) How much money did the studio initially offer Stallone?

3) How long did it take to shoot "Rocky"?

4) How much money did it cost to film "Rocky"?

5) How much money did "Rocky" gross, worldwide?

6) Sylvester Stallone was the third person to be nominated both as Best Actor and for Best Screenplay. Who were the first two?

7) What composer won a Grammy for his original score?

8) What famous World Heavyweight Champion boxer played himself in the film?

9) During the filming of "Rocky," how much was Stallone paid, a week?

10) When Stallone turned down the studio's offer to buy his screenplay, but let a bigger star play the lead role, he had wife who was pregnant and exactly $106 to his name. True or false?

Answers:

1) Burt Reynolds or James Caan.

2) $265,000 and 5% of the profits.

3) 28 days

4) $1 million dollars

5) $225,000,000 worldwide

6) Charles Chaplin for "The Great Dictator" and Orson Welles for "Citizen Kane."

7) Bill Conti won a Grammy for Best Album or Original Score written for a motion picture or television.

8) Joe Frazier

9) Stallone was paid $600 a week and continued to live in a single bedroom walk-up in a rundown section of Hollywood, (After negotiating for 10% of the profits of "Rocky," Stallone was thinking of buying "a Beverly Hills mansion" that, at that time, cost $400,000.). True.