Rocky Reviews
Total Film
It's Sly's droopy-eyed, hangdog/underdog that carries Rocky's tale of transformation. He's no oil painting, no blue-eyed hero. He's not supposed to make it -- and that makes us instantly connect with him.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Cinema Crazed
A crowning achievement in Sylvester Stallone's career as a writer and a performer...
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Top CriticSylvester Stallone [is] as likable as a basset hound.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Three Movie Buffs
One of the greatest, if not the greatest, feel good movies of all time.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Groucho Reviews
It's all here: the famous Bill Conti fanfare, the 'Gonna Fly Now' training montage, the inevitable 'David and Goliath' climax. [Blu-ray]
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Q Network Film Desk
transforms the gritty realities of economic hardship and personal desperation into a celebration of individuality and determination without sinking into mushy sentimentalism
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Common Sense Media
Sly's best pic winner sets underdog-hero standard.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Matt's Movie Reviews
Stallone -- an actor who has made a career of bad performances in bad films -- proves that when given the right material he can act with the best of them.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
There are occasional flashes that the film may be patronizing the lower end of the blue-collar mentality, as much if not more than the characters who keep putting Rocky down on the screen. However, Avildsen is noted for creating such ambiguities.
Film4
A great example of underdog sports cinema.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Empire Magazine
This is really Sly's movie as he slugs his way through a heartfelt performance and delivers some cracking punches, both literally and emotionally.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Rocky retains its power to enthrall ... a quieter movie than some may remember.... It's worth seeing again, for what it was, before it was betrayed by it's less intelligent, testosterone-soaked progeny.
Full Review | Original Score: 87/100
Filmcritic.com
A dunce who can fight with a contagious likability: Now that's American.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
TV Guide's Movie Guide
Better films have been made about the world of sports, but for many Rocky is the sports movie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
I wanted to like it more than I did, but it'll do.
Reel Film Reviews
...there's simply no denying the film's overall effectiveness...
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
DVDTalk.com
A "guy movie" mega-classic that's really gotten better with age.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
EmanuelLevy.Com
An extremely old-fashioned, if also intermittently enjoyable, sports drama that mixes elements of Marty as well as numerous prize-fighting pictures like The Cahamp, Golden Boy, and Somebody Up There Like Me.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Rocky is an old-fashioned fairytale brilliantly revamped to chime in with the depressed mood of the '70s.
JoBlo's Movie Emporium
Easily the best underdog movie ever made!
Full Review
| Original Score: 10/10
