PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 12/18/06)

It's been sixteen years since Sylvester Stallone last donned boxing gloves to play his signature character and exactly thirty years since anyone has been able to describe a Rocky movie as being anything more than a guilty pleasure. So, you can't blame audiences for greeting the prospect of a sixth installment of the franchise with a healthy amount of skepticism. But then, it's only appropriate that Rocky Balboa arrives in theaters as the holiday season's top underdog. Just as he did back in 1976, Rocky—and by extension Stallone—is climbing into the ring as a man with something to prove. And for the first time in thirty years, you just might find yourself cheering him on.

Rocky Balboa picks up with the former champ residing in a modest split-level house in Philly. Most of his days are spent by the grave of his dearly departed wife Adrian. Then, when the sun goes down, he makes his way to the Italian restaurant he owns, where he poses for pictures with customers and regales them with tales of his greatest fights. And once a year he and his brother-in-law, Paulie (Burt Young), take a trip through the old neighborhood, revisiting the pet store where Adrian used to work and the remains of the ice rink where they had their first date. These annual nostalgia tours are the only things that Rocky really has to look forward to. For a brief moment, they allow him to forget that he's a lonely widower with a mediocre restaurant, an estranged son (Milo Ventimiglia), and a life in which there's nothing left to fight for.

This set-up could have served as the basis for a great character study about an aging prizefighter with no hope of getting back in the ring trying to carve out a place for himself in a world that's passed him by. But Stallone has never been that kind of filmmaker and, in the end, Rocky isn't that kind of character. The source of his appeal lies in his stubborn refusal to walk away from a fight, even when he's clearly outmatched. So it's only a matter of time until he finds himself staring down another opponent, in this case current heavyweight champion Mason "The Line" Dixon (played by real-life boxer Antonio Tarver). The two men have been brought together for an exhibition match after a computer simulation showed that an in-his-prime Balboa would have wiped the floor with Dixon. Obviously, there's no way that a fiftysomething Rocky stands a chance of beating the younger fighter, but that doesn't stop him from whipping himself back into shape for one last bout.

In interviews, Stallone has said that he intended Rocky Balboa to be a bookend to the original film and, as promised, viewers can leap directly from that movie to this one without having to make time for the other four installments. Aside from a passing reference to his victory over Apollo Creed and brief glimpses of Clubber Lang and Ivan Drago, the events of Rocky II-IV go unmentioned, while the widely reviled Rocky V has apparently been erased from continuity altogether, along with any mention of Rocky's supposed brain damage. Rocky Balboa is also filled with numerous visual cues and references to the '76 picture, along with the return of two minor characters in beefed-up roles. The result is a film that's as much a nostalgia trip for the audience as it is for its star. The goodwill generated by this approach ends up carrying viewers through the movie's dead spots, including Rocky's awkward attempts to bond with a teenage thug-in-training and an underwritten storyline involving Mason Dixon's own crisis of confidence. It's in these scenes that Stallone's limitations as a writer and director really shine through. After thirty years he knows his own character inside and out, but he still struggles to write convincing dialogue for anyone other than Rocky.

Of course, we're not in the theater to watch Rocky carry on conversations; we're waiting for that moment when Bill Conti's famous score kicks in and this punch-drunk pugilist stops talking and starts his requisite training montage. Naturally, Stallone doesn't stint on the nostalgia in this section of the movie either. Once again, good ol' Rocko pounds away at frozen slabs of beef, knocks back a glass of raw eggs and, of course, runs up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. After that, it's off to Las Vegas for the big showdown with Dixon. While the ending of the match is never really in doubt, it's surprising how much genuine tension Stallone manages to wring out of this unlikely battle, in which both fighters unload on each other with everything they've got. On it's own terms, Rocky Balboa is only a modestly entertaining movie, but taken in context, it's an entirely satisfying conclusion to the Rocky saga. —Ethan Alter