Review # 6: Rocky (and Review # 6.5: Paul Blart: Mall Cop)

Above: A proud wearer of a Rocky Balboa Wig™ and black and yellow bathrobe.

Next in our Netflixian orgies of cinema, we decided to rent Rocky, mostly because I was hoping to scoff at it and say, "How did this cheesefest beat Taxi Driver for Best Picture at the 1976 Oscars?" (My ability to feel shock at the Academy's foolish and incoherent awardees is, perhaps, unfounded; I can remember Crash winning Best Picture like it was last week, and Slumdog Millionaire's win over more deserving films like Milk, Wall-E and The Wrestler is a wound that won't stop infecting.)

Let's bask a moment in my slack-jawed surprise at discovering that Rocky wasn't, in fact, bad: nay, it was actually ... a good movie. When I discovered that Sylvester Stallone himself wrote the screenplay, my respect for the man gracefully burgeoned from fallow soil. And it was quite a well-written film; unlike most sports movies, it didn't feature montages of Rocky vs. random opponents, winning or losing and building up false suspense in viewers. Fighting plays a small role in Rocky, which is what made it so enjoyable- it had more time to believably develop characters, and introduce problems only tangentially related to The Big Fight.

You know the story, of course. (I think I might be the only person in the universe who hadn't seen Rocky.) Small-town boxer has a strange friendship with Jason Schwartzman's mom-- er, I mean, with a local pet shop employee named Adrian. With one-in-a-million odds, he gets to compete against champion wrestler Apollo (Apostles'?) Creed. I love how iconic this movie has become-- I could hardly believe that Rocky invented a.) punching meat, b.) yelling "ADRIAN" in an obnoxious slur, c.) running up steps, d.) that great dun-nuh-nuh, dun-nuh-nuh song and e.) running with your dog. Among other things.

So who cares if we had to put on subtitles to make out what Stallone was slurring? This film is a solid Grade A-.

As a side note, watched most of Paul Blart: Mall Cop today. Almost sickening; it was hard to believe someone actually thought it would be a good idea to make a movie about the most depressingly pathetic guy ever. I didn't laugh, and I stopped cringing about thirty minutes in, once I decided that Paul Blart truly deserves to be sterilized. When I started falling asleep, though, the film seemed to take on an interesting Luis Buñuel quality. Grade: C-.

Also, was in an eighth grader-poet kind of mood today, which meant I wrote a note to no one in particular featuring sweeping statements ("I hate everyone who has tasted the ambrosiac elixir of success. Feeling old and bitter") in felt-tipped pen.