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This
week's answer:
Schlocky
Balboa
Well, Irwin, I did see Rocky
Balboa (but thank God he didn't see me because I was
holding a sign that read, "Adrian was a pet shop
con artist") and understand that the film might
have struck you as overly sentimental. Like many
of the "Rocky" series, the script was
purposely pointed in that direction in order for us to
be nostalgically drawn back thirty years into the
original world of Rocky, the Italian Stallion, when he
met and fell in love with Adrian, the Polish "Molish"
(no, not really) and had his first bout with
Apollo Creed.
The script does have a maudlin,
sometimes almost cloying sensibility as we're brought
along through Rocky's painful memories and current
situation. Even as his life takes on purpose from
meeting the down-and-out husbandless female bartender
and agreeing to box the heavyweight champion, even when
Rocky, through sheer will, goes all ten rounds with the
champ, throughout the ordeal, Rocky is always
Rocky: a well-intentioned, sincere, pitiable
"fighter-a-saurus," trying to maintain in a
world that's speeding by him. From the
post-first-bout moment when he shouted,
"Adrian!" to the last moment in this script
when he's walking away from Adrian's grave, Rocky,
though he has indicated that he no longer has the drive
to box anymore, he's still Rocky, thirty years older,
but still Rocky, the underdog who proved himself time
and time again, and who will somehow continue to be
victorious with your support and others who will
appreciate, admire, and somewhat pity the lug.
(Prizefighters playing the lead roles in films seem to
always be punch-drunk and face-punched, pitiful lugs.)
One could say that the script of Rocky
Balboa is basically a melodrama, and a rather thin
one, at that, when it comes to the lack of complexity
within it. Rocky is the "struggling nice
guy" with nary an iniquitous bone in his body (I
think the Iniquitous bone is connected to the thigh
bone). The script is relentless until it's drawn
out all your sentimental tears as Rocky's forgiving,
tenacious and "streetspun" way wins over his
brother-in-law, the husbandless bartender, the
bartender's son, his own son, and finally the champion
(and let's not forget apparently all of
Philadelphia). (It may be sentimental, but at
least it's totally believable.)
I admit that I cried -- no, make
that "bawled my eyes out." (Don't worry;
I still have my eyes; that's a strange expression, isn't
it?). And the tears from those eyes were the same
kind that I shed during "Life Time Movies-'Old
Yeller'-'Lassie'-'The Champ'-'House on the Prairie'"
moments.
Sorry. Little House on
the Prairie. (The "little" makes the
show more pitiful.)
DcH
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